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OB«acoji  §ti?eet 

JBOSTO5T 


LOUIS    AG  AS  S  I  Z 


ALICE  BACHE  GOULD 


BOSTON 

SMALL,  MAYNARD  &  COMPANY 
MDCCCCI 


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Copyright,  /poo 
Maynard  £ff  Company 

( Incorporated} 



BlOLOGr 
Entered  at  Stationers'  Hall  LIBRARY 


George  H.  Ellis,  Boston 


The  frontispiece  is  from  a  photograph 
representing  Agassiz  in  middle  life,  taken 
by  A.  Sonrel  (exact  date  unknown) ,  and 
kindly  furnished  by  Mrs.  Agassiz.  The 
present  engraving  is  by  John  Andrew  & 
Son,  Boston. 


M122921 


To 
Q.  H. 

Parvum  parvo. 


PEEFACE. 

Lowell  says  of  Agassiz  that  "a  good 
leash  of  mother-tongues  had  he.7'  Agassiz 
indeed  used  French,  German,  and  English 
almost  indifferently  ;  and  his  biographers 
have  used  them  almost  equally.  Everything 
needed  for  this  small  volume  has,  however, 
been  reduced  to  a  dead  level  of  English. 

It  may  be  said  as  truly  that  Agassiz  was 
strongly  conscious  of  two  nationalities.  A 
short  account  of  his  life  has  already  been 
included  in  a  series  dealing  with  Eminent 
Swiss :  he  is  here  presented  as  an  Eminent 
American;  and  he  was  truly  both,  and 
found  the  two  loyalties  compatible. 

The  most  valuable  legacies  of  scientific 
men  are  left  to  the  whole  world,  with  no 
restraint  of  place  and  little  of  time.  But 
there  are  a  few  gifts  which  they  leave,  as 
other  men  leave  them,  to  one  country  or  to 
one  community.  And  whatever  in  Agassiz^  s 
gift  teas  necessarily  thus  restricted  we  find 
to-day  in  America,  not  in  Europe.  In 


x  PEEFACE 

Cambridge  stands  Ms  Museum;  at  twenty 
places  on  our  coasts  are  the  summer  schools 
which  have  succeeded  to  his  Penikese  ;  and 
in  the  American  world  is  the  transmitted 
enthusiasm  which  passes  from  teacher  to 
scholar,— the  fire  that  may  light  up  a  whole 
generation  which  has  forgotten  the  source 
where  it  was  Jcindled.  Agassiz  himself  lies 
buried  in  Mount  Auburn  ;  and,  if  another 
legacy  may  yet  be  named,  his  children  have 
been  left  to  Massachusetts,  and  not  to 
Switzerland,  as  Boston  and  America  have 
grateful  cause  to  Jcnow. 

In  order  to  avoid  foot-notes  on  a  small 
page,  many  quotations  scattered  through  this 
volume  have  been  left  without  any  indication 
of  their  source.  Nine-tenths  of  them  are 
from  Mrs.  Agassiz' s  Life  of  her  husband. 
A  very  liberal  use  (by  permission)  has  been 
made  of  Mrs.  Agassiz'*  admirable  look  and 
easy  translations.  The  present  writer's 
thanks  to  Mrs.  Agassiz,  who  has  moreover 
read  the  narrative  portions  of  this  book 
in  proof,  are  very  gratefully  recorded. 


PEEFACE  xi 

It  should  be  stated  that  Mrs.  Agassiz  in  no 
way  authorises  the  interpretation  of  Agas- 
siz''s  scientific  creed,  which  will  be  found  in 
the  only  chapter  which  is  not  narrative. 
Messrs.  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.  have 
Jcindly  permitted  the  reprinting  of  Longfel- 
low's  poem,  u  On  the  Fiftieth  Anniversary 
of  Agassiz." 

A.  B.  G. 

BOSTON,  Noyember,  1900. 


CHBOtfOLOGY. 

1807 

May  28.  Jean  Louis  Bodolphe  Agassiz 
was  born  at  Motier,  Switzerland. 

1817-24 
At  school  in  Bienne  and  in  Lausanne. 

1824-26 

With  his  brother  at  the  Medical  School 
in  Ziirich. 

1826 

Entered  the  University  of  Heidelberg. 
Met  Alexander  Braun  and  Karl  Schim- 
per. 

1827 
Migrated  to  the  University  of  Munich. 

1829 

Took  degree  of  Doctor  of  Bhilosophy, 
and  edited  Brazilian  Fishes  (in  Latin). 

1830 

April.  Took  degree  of  Doctor  of  Medi- 
cine. 

Visited  Vienna  5  returned  to  Munich. 
December.     Went  home  to  Switzerland. 


xiv  CHBONOLOGY 

1831 

At  home  in  Switzerland. 
December.     Went  to  Paris.     Met  Cuvier 
and  Humboldt. 

1832 

Student  in  Paris. 

February.     Eeceived  from  Cuvier  mate- 
terial  for  his  work  on  Fossil  Fishes. 
November.     Went  to  Neuchatel  as  pro- 
fessor in  the  College. 
December.     Declined  call  to  Heidelberg. 

1833 
Purchase  of  his  collection  for  the  city  of 


Began  publication  of  Fossil  Fishes. 
October.     Married  C6cile  Braun. 

1834-5 
First  and  second  visits  to  England. 

1836  ' 
Declined  call  to  Geneva. 

1837 

Addressed  Helvetic  Society  on  a  Glacial 
Period. 


CHKCXNTOLOGY  xv 

1838 
Declined  call  to  Lausanne. 

1840 

Published    Studies    of   the    Glaciers,    in 
French  (later  in  German). 
H6tel  des  Neuch&telois  established   on 
the  glacier  of  the  Aar. 
Third   visit  to  England;    appeared  as 
advocate  of  an  Ice  Age. 

1843 
Completed  Fossil  Fishes. 

1844 

Published  "  Monograph  on  Fishes  of  the 
Old  Bed  Sandstone/'  as  appendix  to 
Fossil  Fishes. 

1845 

Published  Anatomy  of  the  Salmonidae  (in 
French)  as  part  of  the  Freshwater  Fishes. 

1846 

March.     Left  Neuch&tel. 
Published  Catalogue  of  Uchinoderms  (in 
French)  ;  Index  to  Zoological  Names' (in 
Latin)  ;   finished  work  on  Bibliography 
of  Zoology  (in  Latin). 


xvi  CHBONOLOGY 

1846 

Visited  England  for  fourth  time. 
September.     Sailed  for  America. 
December.     Gave    his    first    lectures    in 
Boston  for  the  Lowell  Institute. 

1847 

Published   (in    Europe)    Glacial  System 
(in  French). 

1848 

Eevolution  in  !N"euch&tel. 
Foundation  of  Lawrence  Scientific  School 
of  Harvard  University. 
Accepted  professorship  at  Harvard. 
Published  Principles    of   Zoology    (with 
Dr.  A.  A.  Gould). 
Expedition  to  Lake  Superior. 
His  wife  died  in  Carlsruhe. 

1850 

Married  Elizabeth  Cabot  Gary. 
Sent  by  Coast  Survey  to  study  Florida 
reefs. 

Became    Professor    at    the     Charleston 
(S.C.)  Medical  College. 


CHEONOLOGY  xvii 

1852 

Eeceived  the  Prix   Cuvier  for  his  Fossil 
Fishes. 

1853 
Eesigned  professorship  at  Charleston. 

1854 
Declined  call  to  University  of  Zurich. 

1855 

Establishment  of  the  Agassiz  School  for 
Young  Ladies  (1855-63). 
Prospectus  issued  for  Contributions  to  the 
Natural  History  of  the  United  States. 

1857 

May  28.  Celebration  of  fiftieth  birthday. 
Completion    of    Essay    on    Classification 
(Vol.  I.  of  Contributions'). 
Declined  call  to  Paris  (as  again  in  1859 
and  1861). 
Published  Vol.  II.  of  Contributions. 

1859 

Corner-stone  laid    for  the  Museum  of 
Comparative  Zoology. 
Spent  the  summer  in  Europe. 


xviii  CHEONOLOGY 

1860 

Dedication  of  the  Museum. 
Published  Vol.  III.  of  Contributions. 

1861 

Became    a    naturalised    citizen    of   the 
United  States. 

Eeceived  the  Copley  Medal  of  the  Eoyal 
Society. 

1862 

Published  Yol.  IY.  of  Contributions  (the 
last  volume  which  was  completed). 

1865-66 
Expedition  to  Brazil. 

1868 
Became  non-resident  professor  at  Cornell. 

1869 

Spoke  at  Humboldt  Centennial. 
Suffered  from  an  acute  illness  of  the 
brain. 

1871-72 
Yoyage  of  the  Hassler. 

1873 

Summer  school  at  Penikese. 
December   14.     Louis    Agassiz    died    at 
Cambridge,  Massachusetts. 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ 


JEAN   LOUIS   RODOL?H& 
AGASSIZ. 

I. 

JEAN  Louis  EODOLPHE  AGASSIZ  was 
born  at  Motier  in  1807.  His  father  was 
pastor  of  the  little  Swiss  village  on  the 
Lake  of  Mor&t,  and  was  also  a  teacher  of 
marked  ability,  so  that  the  passionate 
love  of  teaching  which  always  distin- 
guished Louis  Agassiz  may  have  been  in 
some  sort  an  inheritance.  The  enthusi- 
asm both  for  work  and  for  play  which 
was  so  marked  in  the  man  was  marked 
also  in  the  child.  From  his  early  child- 
hood the  boy  delighted  in  birds  and 
beasts,  fishes  and  insects,  first  in  the  way 
of  an  equal  and  intimate  friend  and  then 
of  a  budding  naturalist.  He  was  always 
tramping  the  fields  and  scouring  the 
banks  of  the  lake  in  search  of  new  creat- 
ures 5  and  he  has  left  it  on  record  that 
the  only  punishment  he  remembers  re- 
ceiving from  his  father  was  in  conse- 


2  LOUTS   AGASSIZ 

quence  of  his  going  fishing  in  an  unsafe 
boat.  Apparently  nothing  followed  on 
the  day  when  he  led  his  little  brother 
to  skate  across  the  Lake  of  Mor&t,  on  ice 
which  was  anything  but  safe,  and  when 
Mme.  Agassiz,  looking  anxiously  from 
the  parsonage  window  to  see  what  had 
become  of  the  children,  caught  sight  of 
them  through  her  telescope  at  the  criti- 
cal moment  when  Louis  was  bridging  a 
fissure  with  his  own  body,  in  order  that 
Auguste  might  creep  across  a  crack  too 
wide  for  him  to  jump.  This  exploit, 
and  the  expedition  in  the  unsafe  boat, 
reassure  a  reader  who  might  be  fright- 
ened by  the  eager  plans  for  extra  lessons 
which  the  school-boy  at  Bienne  laid  be- 
fore his  parents,  and  which  are  accom- 
panied by  prayers  for  money  to  buy 
grammars  and  geographies.  He  ends 
his  petition  with  :  "  I  should  like  to  stay 
at  Bienne  till  the  month  of  July,  and 
afterward  serve  my  apprenticeship  in 
commerce  at  Neueh&tel  for  a  year  and  a 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  3 

half.  Then  I  should  like  to  pass  four 
years  at  a  university  in  Germany,  and 
finally  finish  my  studies  in  Paris,  where 
I  would  stay  about  five  years.  Then,  at 
the  age  of  twenty-five,  I  could  begin  to 
write.'' 

The  apprenticeship  in  commerce  dis- 
appears from  the  future  plans  of  the  boy 
and  his  parents  alike,  as  it  becomes  evi- 
dent that  his  passion  for  study  is  not  a 
passing  taste.  Many  country-bred  chil- 
dren have  pursued  and  petted  and  col- 
lected without  having  anything  come  of 
it;  and  so  have  many  school-boys  prickled 
with  delight  over  poetry  and  romance 
who  are  content  to  spend  their  manhood 
in  chasing  a  sixpence  from  column  to  col- 
umn. The  parent,  whose  fourteen-year- 
old  son  announces  his  intention  of  becom- 
ing an  author,  is  apt  to  ignore  the  an- 
nouncement ;  but  M.  and  Mme.  Agassiz 
appear  to  have  been  thoroughly  wise  in 
bringing  up  their  brilliant  son,  and  to 
have  changed  their  plans  slowly  but 


4  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

steadily  as  Ms  mind  developed.  The 
family  profession  on  Mme.  Agassiz's  side 
was  that  of  medicine.  Louis's  grand- 
father and  uncle  could  probably  assist 
him  in  founding  a  practice  ;  and,  as  soon 
as  the  boy's  age  and  attainments  made  it 
wise  to  trust  the  constancy  of  his  scien- 
tific tastes,  his  parents  gave  full  consent 
that  he  should  study  to  become  a  physi- 
cian. "With  this  in  view,  his  school 
course  at  Bienne  was  supplemented  by 
two  years  more  at  Lausanne  ;  and  he  was 
then  sent  at  seventeen  years  old  to  the 
Medical  School  at  Zurich.  Here  for  the 
first  time  he  found  scientific  books  5  and 
he  and  his  brother  Auguste  used  to  copy 
by  hand  the  treatises  on  Natural  His- 
tory which  they  were  much'  too  poor  to 
buy. 

Agassiz  himself  said  later  that  the 
inability  to  buy  books,  which  then 
seemed  so  great  a  misfortune,  may  have 
been  a  blessing  in  disguise,  because  it 
saved  him  from  dependence  on  written 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  5 

authority.  When  at  last  he  had  access 
to  scientific  books,  he  had  already  learned 
that  the  thing  itself  was  better  worth 
study  than  was  its  description ;  and, 
indeed,  he  knew  the  Swiss  fishes  so  well 
that  he  wondered  to  find  so  little  in 
print  about  those  instincts,  habits,  atti- 
tudes, and  motions  with  which  he  was 
familiar.  Alexander  Braun,  later  his 
fellow-student  at  Heidelberg,  wrote  home 
from  there  that  Agassiz  was  familiar 
with  every  beast,  knew  the  birds  from 
far-off  by  their  song,  and  could  give  a 
name  to  every  fish  in  the  water. 

In  the  spring  of  1826,  when  nineteen 
years  old,  Agassiz  left  Zurich  for  Heidel- 
berg ;  and  here  his  true  university  life 
began.  He  and  his  brother  parted, 
Auguste  returning  to  the  commercial 
apprenticeship  which  the  older  brother 
refused,  and  Louis  going  out  to  make 
new  friends,  whose  first  friendship  came 
from  an  intellectual  sympathy  and  from 
like  intellectual  aims,  not  from  blood  re- 


6  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

lationship  or  old  association.  His  letters 
to  Auguste  have  a  delightful  elder- 
brotherly  tone  through  all  their  frank 
affection.  With  Auguste  he  can  safely 
allow  himself  the  luxury  of  a  lecture, 
whether  it  be  four  pages  on  the  elephant 
of  the  Lena  or  a  disquisition  on  the 
rejected  commercial  career  at  Neuch&tel. 
"  I  earnestly  advise  you  to  while  away 
your  leisure  hours  with  study,"  he 
writes,  when  twenty  years  old,  to  his 
brother  of  eighteen.  "Read  much,  but 
only  good  and  useful  books.  .  .  .  Ke- 
member  that  statistical  and  political 
knowledge  alone  distinguishes  the  true 
merchant  from  the  mere  huckster  in 
coffee  and  candles.  ...  A  merchant 
familiar  with  the  products  of  a  country, 
its  resources,  its  commercial  and  political 
relations  with  other  countries,  is  much 
less  likely  to  enter  into  speculations 
based  on  false  ideas,  and  therefore  of 
doubtful  issue.  Write  me  about  what 
you  are  reading  and  about  your  plans 


LOUIS   AGASSIZ  7 

and  projects,  for  I  can  hardly  believe 
that  any  one  can  live  without  forming 
them  :  I?  at  least,  could  not." 


II. 

THE  four  years  spent  at  Heidelberg 
and  Munich  are  among  the  most  pictu- 
resque in  Agassiz's  life.  In  his  letters 
and  in  those  of  his  friend  Alexander 
Braun,  we  are  fortunate  enough  to  have 
the  impressions  and  hopes  of  the  ambi- 
tious young  fellows  and  the  very  spirit 
of  the  place  and  time  fixed  forever.  E"o 
narrative  can  paint  as  vividly  as  these 
unconscious  letters.  It  was  a  true  Ger- 
man student  life,  with  its  migrations 
from  university  to  university,  its  vaca- 
tion tramps,  its  ardent  intellectual  en- 
thusiasms, not  without  the  obbligato  ac- 
companiment of  clinking  rapiers  and 
beer-mugs.  Duels  and  love-making  are 
dimly  guessed  through  the  cloud  of 
tobacco  smoke — "so  tpiick  you  might 
have  cut  it  with  a  knife ??  — that  floats 
about  the  three  brilliant  companions, 
Braun,  Schiinper,  and  Agassiz,  whose 
room  at  Munich  was  known  as  "The 
Little  Academy." 


LOUIS   AGASSIZ  9 

Life  at  the  university  marks  Agassiz's 
entrance  upon  an  intellectual  citizen- 
ship, and  the  beginning  of  his  influence 
on  other  men.  The  fervour  of  his 
scientific  friendships  was  doubtless  con- 
nected with  his  passionate  love  of  teach- 
ing, both  being  at  root  a  love  of  sharing 
intellectual  pleasures.  Most  men  want 
intellectual  exchange  and  sympathy 
much  oftener  than  they  get  it ;  but 
there  is  a  power  of  getting  what  one 
wants,  an  ability  to  stimulate  mental  re- 
sponse and  to  charm  the  best  out  of  each 
companion,  and  this  is  the  teacher's 
gift  —  much  the  same  in  its  essence  as 
the  gift  of  leadership  in  any  kind.  This 
trait  was  one  which  Agassiz  had  in  its 
highest  development.  It  was  not  only 
to  his  equals,  but  to  children  and  work- 
ingmen  that  he  loved  to  pour  out  his 
ideas.  What  is  so  contagious  as  enjoy- 
ment1? What  so  inspiring  as  enthusi- 
asm1! His  wife  tells  us  that  in  later 
life  he  would  talk  of  glacial  phenomena 


10  LOUIS   AGASS1Z 

to  the  driver  of  a  country  stage- coach 
among  the  mountains  or  to  some  work- 
man splitting  rock  at  the  roadside  with 
as  much  earnestness  as  if  he  had  been 
discussing  problems  with  a  brother  ge- 
ologist. He  would  take  the  common 
fisherman  into  his  scientific  confidence, 
telling  him  the  intimate  secrets  of  fish 
structure  or  fish  embryology  till  the  man 
in  his  turn  grew  enthusiastic,  and  began 
to  pour  out  information  from  the  stores 
of  his  own  rough  and  untaught  observa- 
tion. 

So  it  was,  too,  in  Agassiz's  youth.  He 
not  only  made  friends  everywhere,  but 
he  made  them  on  an  intellectual  basis 
which  would  have  pleased  Emerson 
himself  5  and  then  he  poured  out  a 
hearty  affection  and  emotional  wealth 
that  transformed  the  relation.  Ear- 
liest and  strongest  of  his  friendships,  and 
most  important  for  his  after-life,  was 
that  with  Alexander  Braun,  whose  par- 
ents' house  at  Carlsruhe  soon  was  to 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  11 

Agassiz  as  a  second  home,  and  whose  sis- 
ter C6cile  afterward  became  Agassiz' s 
wife.  Tiedemann,  the  professor  of  anat- 
omy at  Heidelberg,  l c  who  must  have  had 
a  quick  eye  for  affinities  in  the  moral  as 
well  as  in  the  physical  world,'7  had  sep- 
arately advised  each  of  the  young  men 
to  seek  the  acquaintance  of  the  other. 
At  the  first  anatomical  lecture  the  two 
students  happened  to  sit  together  5  and 
each,  observing  the  careful  and  intelli- 
gent note-taking  of  the  other,  was  con- 
vinced that  this  must  be  the  student  who 
had  been  recommended  to  him.  Thus, 
by  a  mutual  impulse,  when  they  rose 
to  go,  each  called  the  other  by  name. 
Tiedemann' s  little  plot  stood  revealed, 
and  never  was  a  match-maker  more 
brilliantly  successful.  It  was  an  inti- 
macy at  first  sight  which  lasted  for  life. 
The  two  boys  left  the  room  together, 
and  from  that  moment  their  work  was 
carried  on  in  concert.  Karl  Schimper,  a 
third  young  fellow  of  even  greater  abil- 


12  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

ity  and  even  more  catholic  tastes,  com- 
pleted a  triple  alliance  which  was  soon 
known  among  the  students  as  the  "Clo- 
verleaf."  Two  of  its  three  members  rose 
to  eminence  and  left  human  knowledge 
other  than  they  found  it ;  but  Schimper 
lacked  the  moral  force  to  keep  himself 
in  hand,  and  his  life  was  but  a  series  of 
irreparable  mistakes. 

Agassiz's  studentship  at  Heidelberg 
lasted  just  a  year,  from  May,  1826,  to 
May,  1827.  He  fell  ill  of  a  fever,  and, 
instead  of  returning  for  the  summer  se- 
mester, was  obliged  to  stay  at  home  to 
regain  his  strength  in  Switzerland.  In 
the  mean  time  Braun  made  his  plans  to 
exchange  Heidelberg  for  the  new  Univer- 
sity of  Munich,  and  Agassiz  agreed  to 
accompany  him.  The,  Cloverleaf  was 
re-established  in  Munich  ;  for  Schimper 
soon  followed  the  other  two  friends, 
coming  in  answer  to  their  earnest  invi- 
tation to  live  partly  at  their  expense. 
Complete  community  of  goods,  material 


LOUIS   AGASSIZ  13 

and  intellectual,  seems  to  have  been  the 
rule;  and  there  was  no  thought  of  the 
tragic  consequence  which  was  to  come 
ten  years  later,  when  Schimper  should 
accuse  first  Braun  and  then  Agassiz  of 
stealing  his  theories.  Always  petulant 
and  without  self-control,  Schimper  was 
incapable  of  carrying  anything  to  a 
finish  5  and  he  has  left  only  a  few  scat- 
tered botanical  papers  and  two  thin 
volumes  of  poetry.  But  the  expecta- 
tions which  his  friends  entertained  of 
him  were  boundless,  and  must  have  been 
justified  by  his  early  brilliancy,  though 
the  world  has  long  since  forgotten  his 
ineffectual  fire.  Braun,  on  the  other 
hand,  if  less  world-famous  than  Agassiz, 
is  no  less  honoured  among  German  bot- 
anists. As  late  as  1864,  Schimper  wrote 
that  he  was  about  to  publish  a  botanical 
work.  Braun  has  indorsed  the  letter, 
" May  God  grant  it! " 

After  a  hard  day's  work  in  hearing 
lectures,  the  Cl overleaf  three,  along  with 


14  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

a  few  other  students,  used  by  way  of 
recreation  to  turn  and  lecture  to  one 
another.  ' '  When  our  lectures  are  over, 
we  meet  in  the  evening  at  Braun's  room 
or  mine,  with  three  or  four  intimate 
acquaintances,  and  talk  of  scientific 
matters,  each  one  in  his  turn  presenting 
a  subject  which  is  first  developed  by  him 
and  then  discussed  by  all.  These  exer- 
cises are  very  instructive.  As  my  share, 
I  have  begun  to  give  a  course  of  natural 
history,  or  rather  of  pure  zoology.  Braun 
talks  to  us  of  botany  ;  and  another  of  our 
company,  Mahir,  .  .  .  teaches  us  mathe- 
matics and  physics  in  his  turn.  .  .  . 
Schimper  will  be  our  professor  pf  philos- 
ophy. Thus  we  shall  form  a  little  uni- 
versity, instructing  one  another,  and  at 
the  same  time  learning  what  we  teach 
more  thoroughly,  because  we  shall  be 
obliged  to  demonstrate  it.  Each  session 
lasts  two  or  three  hours,  during  which 
the  professor  in  charge  retails  his  mer- 
chandise without  aid  of  notes  or  book. 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  15 

You  can  imagine  how  useful  this  must  be 
in  preparing  us  to  speak  in  public  and 
with  coherence.  The  experience  is  the 
more  important,  since  we  all  desire 
nothing  so  much  as  sooner  or  later  to 
become  professors  in  very  truth,  after 
having  played  at  professor  in  the 
university. " 

The  change  from  Heidelberg  to  Mu- 
nich worked  very  well.  A  far  more 
stimulating  intellectual  life  awaited  the 
eager  young  fellows  among  the  group  of 
distinguished  professors  whom  Ludwig, 
the  art-loving  Bavarian  king,  had  gath- 
ered for  his  new  University  of  Munich. 
We  in  America  are  accustomed  to  see 
Minerva  spring  in  full  panoply  from  the 
fertile  brain  of  some  millionaire, —  a 
Danae  rather  than  a  Jove.  But  in  the 
older  world  it  is  rare  to  find  a  university 
made  in  a  day  and  successfully  createcj 
by  fiat,  and  thus  the  brilliant  opening 
of  the  University  of  Munich  has  especial 
interest.  The  names  of  Schelling  and 


16  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

Oken  are  perhaps  the  most  famous  upon 
its  list  of  teachers,  at  least  for  the  gen- 
eral reader.  Dollinger,  Martius,  Zuc- 
carini,  Schubert,  Wagler,  and  many 
others  follow  for  the  student  of  natural 
science.  "I  cannot  review  my  Munich 
life  without  deep  gratitude/'  wrote 
Agassiz  himself,  long  afterward.  "The 
city  teemed  with  resources  for  the  stu- 
dent in  arts,  letters,  philosophy,  and  sci- 
ence. It  was  distinguished  at  that  time 
for  activity  in  public  as  well  as  in  aca- 
demic life.  The  king  seemed  liberal; 
he  was  the  friend  of  poets  and  artists, 
and  aimed  at  concentrating  all  the  glo- 
ries of  Germany  in  his  new  university. 
I  thus  enjoyed  for  a  few  years  the  ex- 
ample of  the  most  brilliant  intellects  and 
that  stimulus  which  is^  given  by  compe- 
tition between  men  equally  eminent  in 
different  spheres  of  human  knowledge. 
Under  such  circumstances  a  man  either 
subsides  into  the  position  of  a  follower 
in  the  ranks  that  gather  around  a  mas- 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  17 

ter  or  lie  aspires  to  be  a  master  him- 
self.7' 

In  another  place  he  writes  of  Mnnich 
(we  omit  some  portions)  :  "That  uni- 
versity had  opened  under  the  most 
brilliant  auspices.  Almost  every  name 
on  the  list  of  professors  was  also  promi- 
nent in  some  department  of  science  or 
literature.  They  were  not  men  who 
taught  from  text-books,  or  even  read 
lectures  made  from  extracts  of  original 
works.  They  were  themselves  original 
investigators,  daily  contributing  to  the 
sum  of  human  knowledge.  And  they 
were  not  only  our  teachers,  but  our 
friends.  The  best  spirit  prevailed 
among  the  professors  and  students. 
We  were  often  the  companions  of  their 
walks,  often  present  at  their  discussions  ; 
and  when  we  met  for  conversation  or  to 
give  lectures  among  ourselves,  as  we 
constantly  did,  our  professors  were 
often  among  our  listeners,  cheering  and 
stimulating  us  in  all  our  efforts  after  in- 
dependent research. 


18  LOUIS    AGASSIZ 

"My  room  was  our  meeting-place, — 
bedroom,  study,  museum,  library,  lect- 
ure-room, fencing-room,  all  in  one. 
Students  and  professors  alike  used  to 
call  it  the  Little  Academy.  Here 
Schimper  and  Braun  for  the  first  time 
discussed  the  laws  of  phyllotaxis,  that 
marvellous  rhythmical  arrangement  of 
the  leaves  in  plants.  Among  their  lis- 
teners were  Professors  Martius  and  Zuc- 
carini ;  and  even  Eobert  Brown,  while 
in  Munich,  during  a  journey  through 
Germany,  sought  the  acquaintance  of 
these  young  botanists.  It  was  in  our 
Little  Academy  that  Dollinger,  the 
great  master  in  physiology  and  embry- 
ology, .  .  .  taught  us  the  use  of  the 
microscope  in  embryological  investiga- 
tion." Other  students  not  of  the 
Cloverleaf  were  prominent  in  the  Little 
Academy ;  and  as  for  the  subjects  dis- 
cussed, they  ranged  from  the  Anatomy 
of  the  Lamper-eel  to  the  Structure  of  the 
Bavarian  Alps ;  and  from  the  Natural 


LOUIS   AGASSIZ  19 

History  of  the  Mind  to  the  Reasons  why 
Comets  have  Tails.  As  various  were 
the  specimens  which  adorned  the  room. 
When  a  child,  Agassiz  must  have  bid 
fair  to  choke  up  the  little  parsonage 
with  his  collection  of  caterpillars  and 
cocoons ;  and,  in  writing  of  his  life  in 
Zurich,  he  makes  passing  mention  of 
"some  forty  birds  flying  about  my  study, 
with  no  other  home  than  a  large  pine- 
tree  in  the  corner.7'  At  Munich  it  was 
certainly  the  same.  Braun  speaks  of 
Agassiz7 s  little  closet,  "not  for  the  use 
of  men,  but  devoted  to  such  Lenten  fare 
as  fish,  otters,  beavers,  and  birds.77 
"When  I  knock  on  the  wall  against 
which  stands  the  bed,  then  Agassiz 
comes  over :  there  is  only  a  thin  parti- 
tion between  us.  He  has  a  living-room 
of  irregular  shape  with  a  little  bedroom 
and  an  entry  where  his  fishes  are  lodged. 
While  I  am  writing  here,  he  sits  on  tie 
other  side  attending  to  his  fish,  of  which 
he  has  already  bought  several  hundred, 


20  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

and  which  are  shut  up  in  a  wooden  tub 
with  a  cover,  and  in  various  big  glass 
jars.  A  live  gudgeon  with  beautiful 
stripes  is  wriggling  in  his  wash-bowl, 
and  he  has  adorned  his  table  with 
monkeys.  We  stay  together  in  his 
room  or  mine  by  turns,  so  as  not  to 
need  heat  in  two  rooms,  and  not  to  burn 
twice  as  much  for  light. ? ' 

The  Little  Academy  could  hold  from 
fifteen  to  twenty  persons  —  i  i  conven- 
iently.'7 The  walls  were  white  and 
covered  with  diagrams,  to  which  the 
draughtsmen  employed  by  Agassiz  to 
draw  his  fishes  had  added  skeletons  and 
caricatures.  Braun,  Schimper,  and  Ag- 
assiz alike  brought  home  all  the  speci- 
mens they  could  collect  in  their  excur- 
sions ;  and  such  material' had  to  find  a 
place,  whether  on  the  bed  or  on  the 
floor.  Books  filled  the  chairs,  so  that  no 
visitor  could  sit  down ;  and  sometimes 
there  was  little  room  to  stand  or  move 
about.  "In  short,  it  was  quite  orig- 


LOUIS   AGASSIZ  21 

inal,"  writes  one  of  the  draughtsmen, 
who  further  sums  up  the  effect  as  that  of 
"a  perfect  German  student's  room.7' 
UI  was  some  time  there  before  I  could 
discover  the  real  names  of  his  friends  : 
each  had  a  nickname, —  Molluscus,  Cy- 
prinus,  Bhubarb,  etc."  The  unwonted 
luxury  of  several  windows  and  of  a  little 
entrance-room  for  his  collections  seems 
to  have  caused  much  remark,  but  it  was 
not  for  these  striking  features  that  Agas- 
siz  thought  his  lodging  worth  remem- 
brance. "  In  that  room  I  made  all  the 
skeletons  represented  on  the  plates  of 
Wagler's  Natural  System  of  Eeptiles; 
there  I  once  received  the  great  anato- 
mist Meckel,  sent  to  me  by  Dollinger  to 
examine  my  anatomical  preparations, 
and  especially  the  many  fish  skeletons 
I  had  made  from  fresh- water  fishes." 
Braun  takes  the  same  fact  from  another 
point  of  view,  and  writes  home :  "Un-, 
der  Agassiz's  new  style  of  housekeeping, 
the  coffee  is  made  in  a  machine  which 


22  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

is  devoted  during  the  day  to  the  soaking 
of  all  sorts  of  creatures  for  skeletons,  and 
in  the  evening  again  to  the  brewing  of 
our  tea." 

These  Munich  students  were,  of  course, 
the  picked  men  of  a  brilliant  university; 
but  still  they  were  not  so  different 
from  the  others  as  to  make  them  self- 
conscious.  Research  was  in  the  air :  it 
was  like  the  passion  for  business  among 
older  men  in  America.  And  so  our 
wonder  at  the  abilities  of  Agassiz  and 
his  companions  shades  into  a  wonder  at 
the  intellectual  level  and  assumption  of 
the  twenty-year-old  society  in  which 
they  found  themselves.  It  seems  at  first 
like  a  playing  at  naturalists :  next  we 
are  struck  with  surprise  at  the  excellent 
quality  of  the  work  dora,  tried  not  by 
any  graded  or  conventionalised  stand- 
ards, but  without  handicap  and  by  the 
absolute  standard  of  the  grown-up  world. 
And  most  conspicuous  of  all  is  their 
exceeding  pleasure  in  all  their  efforts. 


LOUIS   AGASSIZ  23 

The  jollity  of  the  Cloverleaf,  the  high 
spirits  and  full  living  of  its  three  mem- 
bers, their  vacations  and  their  fencing- 
bouts  and  their  many  pleasures,  save 
them  from  any  possible  imputation  of 
priggishness.  Life  was  fuller  to  them 
than  to  most;  after  the  delight  of  an 
opera  there  is  all  the  interest  of  a  dissec- 
tion ;  and  the  joy  of  a  mountain  climb  is 
enhanced  by  an  opportunity  to  get  your 
companion's  views  on  phyllotaxis  —  and 
so  back  to  Munich  in  time  for  the  lect- 
ures on  the  Philosophy  of  Eevelation. 
How  fortunate  that  Agassiz's  remittance 
should  come  to  hand  just  as  Schimper 
needed  it !  How  remarkably  excellent 
is  the  Bavarian  beer  !  How  charming 
is  divine  philosophy!  The  Cloverleaf 
was  gay  enough,  but  its  glee  interfered 
with  its  scholarship  no  more  than  hard 
work  spoiled  its  fun.  Agassiz  once  chal- 
lenged an  entire  student-corps  to  fight/ 
one  after  the  other,  because  of  some  slur 
upon  Switzerland  ;  but  we  should  be 


24  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

surprised  to  hear  that  lie  missed  a  lecture 
in  consequence.  The  enemy  will  kindly 
consult  the  university  schedule,  when 
making  engagements. 

The  incurable  optimism  which  buoyed 
Agassiz  through  life  was  part  of  his 
physical  outfit.  Such  capacity  for  hap- 
piness generally  means  capacity  for 
pain,  but  with  Agassiz  it  really  seems 
as  if  one  did  not  imply  the  other.  He 
is  but  the  more  picturesque  for  his  pov- 
erty, for  which  he  took  little  thought 
except  when  it  interfered  with  scientific 
ambitions.  His  life  long,  Agassiz  could 
not  believe  that  those  who  worked  un- 
selfishly for  the  advancement  of  human 
knowledge  would  not  find  their  daily 
bread  in  some  way  provided  ;  and  his 
of  ten- quoted  answer  $0  a  business  offer 
in  his  American  days,  "But,  my  dear 
sir,  I  cannot  spend  my  time  in  making 
money ! 7  ?  would  have  been  given  as 
naturally  when  he  had  nothing  as  when 
he  was  in  comfort.  During  part  of  his 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  25 

student  life  he  lived  for  a  few  cents  a 
day,  while  his  scanty  allowance  went  for 
the  support  of  two  artists  whom  he  kept 
busy  drawing  fishes,  and  for  the  help  of 
Schimper,  who  was  even  poorer,  and  to 
whom  daily  meals  during  his  university 
residence  presented  a  problem. 

Working  hours  stretched  from  seven 
in  the  morning  to  eight  or  nine  at  night, 
but  with  constant  intermissions  and  very 
various  sorts  of  occupation.  "  At  seven 
o'clock  we  go  to  the  hospital,  at  eight  to 
the  university,  from  nine  to  eleven  gen- 
erally to  the  Eoyal  Library  ;  from  twelve 
to  one  are  the  lectures  on  Natural  His- 
tory from  Oken ;  between  one  and  two 
we  go  to  some  cafe  or  other  for  dinner  ; 
from  two  to  three  to  the  Botanic 
Garden,  where  we  have  lectures  from 
Martius  and  Zuccarini  in  turn.  At 
three  we  go  to  the  university  and  hear 
Schubert  on  Natural  History  till  four 
o'  clock,  then  Oken  on  the  Philosophy  of 
Nature,  and,  lastly,  Schelling  on  Philos- 
ophy. Then  we  often  feel  tired. " 


26  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

This  is  Braun' s  account.  Agassiz's  is 
almost  word  for  word  the  same,  and 
adds:  "This  is  the  course  of  my  daily 
life,  with  the  single  exception  that  some- 
times Braun  and  I  pass  an  evening  with 
some  professor,  discussing  with  all  our 
might  and  main  subjects  of  which  we 
often  know  nothing.  This  does  not, 
however,  lessen  the  animation  of  the 
talk. '  ?  And  so  again  Braun  :  ' £  There  is 
a  charming  custom  here  of  going  to  the 
professors'  houses  on  certain  evenings. 
It  is  all  as  informal  as  at  a  Kneipe ;  and 
the  talk  is  on  all  imaginable  things,  both 
in  science  and  in  every- day  affairs.  At 
Martins'  house  they  generally  give  us 
tea  5  at  Okeii's,  beer  ;  and  to  every 
man  a  pipe  with  his  name  written  on 
it.  When  all  have  their  little  white 
pipes  in  their  mouths,  it  is  quite  Dutch." 

These  boys  seem  to  have  the  knack  of 
finding  thirty-six  hours  instead  of  twen- 
ty-four. One  wonders  whether  nervous 
prostration  had  then  been  invented.  In 


LOUIS   AGASSIZ  27 

Heidelberg  they  had  succeeded  in  get- 
ting an  extra  course  of  lectures  at  seven 
in  the  morning,  and  were  often  obliged 
to  pull  their  professor  out  of  bed  for  the 
purpose.  The  fact  that  they  did  so,  as 
Mrs.  Agassiz  remarks,  shows  at  least 
the  friendly  relation  existing  between 
teacher  and  scholars.  In  Munich  there 
was  no  need  for  any  extra  courses  :  more 
were  already  given  than  even  the  Clo- 
verleaf  could  assimilate.  Extra  energy 
could  all  be  expended  on  the  lectures  of 
the  Little  Academy,  which  enjoyed  still 
one  more  advantage  in  being  directly 
under  Professor  Dollinger's  own  rooms. 
This  made  easy  an  informal  intercourse 
of  better  worth  than  even  formal  lect- 
ures. 

Curiously  enough,  in  Agassiz7 s  pub- 
lished letters  there  is  little  mention  of 
the  philosopher  Schelling,  though  Schell- 
ing  undoubtedly  exerted  a  profound  in- 
fluence on  Agassiz 's  mode  of  thought. 
Braun,  on  the  other  hand,  is  constantly 


28  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

bursting  into  enthusiasms  like  these, 
"The  real  master  of  all  is  Schelling'7  5 
i '  Schelling  is  again  lecturing  gloriously ?  ? ; 
"  One  hour  with  Schelling  is  worth  more 
than  everything  one  can  hear  at  Heidel- 
berg all  put  together.  .  .  .  His  first  lect- 
ure on  the  value  of  philosophy,  and  the 
need  of  it  in  natural  science,  in  law,  art, 
religion,  and  politics,  ought  to  have 
been  heard  by  all  the  world ;  and,  in- 
deed, men  of  all  sorts  were  present,  as 
well  as  the  students,  even  some  from  the 
Minister's  Privy  Council.  The  king 
was  expected,  but  did  not  come.  I 
have  never  heard  a  more  beautiful  and 
a  more  artistic  discourse  than  this  open- 
ing lecture.  "When  he  had  finished, 
some  one  in  the  audience  cried,  'Er 
lebe  hoch 7 ;  and  thereupon  there  were 
three  such  ringing  cheers  that  the  whole 
house  shook." 

Both  Braun  and  Agassiz  were  under 
strong  home  influences.  The  "  sweet- 
ness of  the  old  Swiss  manse "  lingered 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  29 

always  around  Agassiz,  whose  intimacy 
with  both  father  and  mother  is  charm- 
ing. "I  have  my  evening  service  and 
talk  silently  with  you,  believing  that  at 
that  hour  you  also  do  not  forget  your 
Louis,  who  thinks  always  of  you,"  he 
writes  from  the  university  to  his  father  ; 
and  the  watchful  solicitude  of  both 
parents,  with  the  high  ideal  of  character 
which  they  always  take  for  granted  as 
both  his  and  theirs,  should  melt  any 
reader.  But,  though  their  sympathy 
was  constant  and  intelligent,  they  had 
little  or  no  technical  understanding  of 
his  work.  For  Braun,  on  the  other 
hand,  all  the  influences  at  home  made 
as  distinctly  toward  research  as  did  any- 
thing at  Munich.  His  father's  profes- 
sion, indeed,  was  not  scientific  —  he  was 
postmaster-general  of  the  Duchy  of 
Baden — but  the  elder  Braun  was  more 
than  an  amateur.  He  owned  some  valu- 
able collections,  especially  in  mineral- 
ogy ;  and  one  whole  wing  of  his  house 


30  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

in  Carlsruhe  was  given  up  to  laborato- 
ries and  other  rooms  for  his  sons  and  their 
university  friends.  The  situation  of  the 
house  was  beautiful;  and  the  domestic 
life  within  it  was  affectionate,  cheerful, 
and  pious.  A  pleasanter  place  to  pass 
a  vacation  could  hardly  be  imagined; 
and,  as  Switzerland  was  too  far  for 
Agassiz's  finances,  he  used  to  go  to 
Carlsruhe  as  a  matter  of  course.  There, 
when  the  rush  of  term  time  was  over,  he 
could  work  in  comparative  leisure. 

A  letter  from  another  of  the  student 
guests  says  :  ' ( Braun'  s  sisters  are  simple, 
quiet  girls,  without  any  airs.  Both  are 
much  interested  in  natural  history,  es- 
pecially—  as  is  proper  for  young  ladies  — 
in  botany;  the  youngest  also  in  but- 
terflies." This  ladylike  curriculum 
must  afterward  have  been  somewhat  en- 
larged. The  elder  sister,  Cecile,  was  a 
skilful  artist  5  and  both  before  and  after 
her  marriage  with  Agassiz  she  gave  him 
valuable  help  in  preparing  sketches  for 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  31 

the  lithographer.  Braun  had  two  sisters 
and  two  intimate  friends  5  the  result  was 
exactly  what  might  have  been  expected. 
From  choice  as  well  as  from  economy 
the  young  men  used  often  to  make  part 
of  the  journey  to  Carlsruhe  on  foot ;  and 
in  several  vacations  they  made  further 
expeditions  to  see  such  museums  as  were 
within  reach  or  to  visit  any  scientific 
men  to  whom  they  could  get  introduc- 
tions, and  to  make  themselves  familiar 
with  the  best  private  collections  in  their 
part  of  Germany.  Agassiz  says  that  at 
the  end  of  his  student  life  he  knew  every 
animal,  living  and  fossil,  in  the  mu- 
seums of  Munich,  Stuttgart,  Tubingen, 
Erlangen,  Wiirzburg,  Carlsruhe,  and 
Frankfort ;  had  travelled  on  foot  all  over 
Southern  Germany,  and  had  explored 
extensive  tracts  of  the  Alps.  The  Frank- 
fort Museum  had  recently  been  greatly 
enriched  by  foreign  collections,  and  the 
collector  was  shortly  to  go  again  to 
Africa.  Agassiz  longed  to  accompany 


32  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

him,  but  longed  in  vain.  There  was  one 
pet  plan  of  the  Cloverleaf  which  re- 
mained a  mere  castle  in  the  air.  All 
three  of  the  young  men  wanted  to  travel 
in  distant  countries.  Was  not  the  world 
the  greatest  of  all  museums,  in  which  as 
yet  they  knew  only  one  room  f 

Humboldt's  travels  had  fired  all  the 
young  naturalists  of  the  day.  Charles 
Darwin  as  well  as  Agassiz  speaks  of  read- 
ing and  re-reading  Humboldt's  Narra- 
tive, and  of  the  longings  it  aroused.  But 
Agassiz  was  not  so  fortunate  as  to  find 
any  Beagle  which  would  have  him  at  a 
gift,  though  he  tried  for  at  least  three  of 
the  scientific  expeditions  which  were  fit- 
ting out  while  he  was  a  student.  His 
preparations  for  the  chance  that  never 
came, — skinning  and  pickling  animals, 
"even  very  large  ones/'  practising  with 
axe,  hammer,  and  sabre,  swimming, 
making  forced  marches,  keeping  himself 
always  ready  to  start  at  a  day's  notice, 
and  finally  "training  a  young  friend  as 


LOUIS   AGASSIZ  33 

travelling  companion ' ' —  all  this  delight- 
ful game  at  Robinson  Crusoe  was  of  no 
avail.  He  solemnly  obtained  his  par- 
ents7 consent,  calling  travel  a  step 
toward  a  professorship.  How  it  struck 
his  father  at  first  we  may  see  from  part 
of  a  letter  : 

"My  dear  Louis,  .  .  .  our  gratifica- 
tion lacks  something.  It  would  be  more 
complete,  had  you  not  a  mania  for 
rushing  full  gallop  into  the  future.  I 
have  often  reproved  you  for  this,  and 
you  would  fare  better,  did  you  pay  more 
attention  to  my  reproof.  If  it  be  an  in- 
curable malady  with  you,  at  all  events 
do  not  force  your  parents  to  share  it. 
If  it  be  absolutely  essential  to  your  hap- 
piness that  you  should  break  the  ice  of 
the  two  poles  in  order  to  find  the  hairs 
of  a  mammoth,  or  that  you  should  dry 
your  shirt  in  the  sun  of  the  tropics,  at 
least  wait  till  your  trunk  is  packed  and 
your  passports  are  signed  before  you 
talk  with  us  about  it.  Begin  by  reach- 


34  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

ing  your  first  aim,  a  physician's  and 
surgeon's  diploma.  I  will  not  for  the 
present  hear  of  anything  else." 

But  there  was  one  short  interval  when 
there  seemed  a  real  chance  that  Agassiz 
might  find  the  opening  he  sought.  In 
1829  Humboldt  himself  was  starting  for 
the  Ural  and  the  Caspian ;  and  on  one 
happy  evening,  when  the  little  white 
pipes  were  out  at  Professor  Oken's, 
Oken  promised  to  recommend  the  entire 
Cloverleaf  in  case  Humboldt  should  be 
willing  to  enlarge  his  company.  ' '  "With 
this/7  Braun  wrote,  u  we  went  home  in 
great  glee.  It  was  very  late  and  a 
bright  moonlight  night.  Agassiz  rolled 
himself  in  the  snow  for  joy ;  and  we 
agreed  that,  however  little  hope  there 
might  be  of  our  joining  the  expedition, 
still  the  fact  that  Humboldt  would  hear 
of  us  in  this  way  was  worth  something, 
even  if  it  were  only  that  we  might  be 
able  to  say  to  him  one  of  these  days, 
*  We  are  the  fellows  whose  company  you 


LOUIS   AGASSIZ  35 

rejected.'  "  But  it  was  very  little  later 
that  Braun  wrote  liome  again,  announc- 
ing what  lie  calls  "our  return  from  the 
Ural  Mountains. " 

We  have  tried  to  make  Agassiz  paint 
his  own  portrait;   but  we  may   add  a 
description  given  by  Mr.   Dinkel,   the 
draughtsman  already  quoted  :  "He  was 
at  that  time  scarcely  twenty  years  old, 
and  was  already   the   most   prominent 
among  the  students  at  Munich.     They 
loved  him,  and  had  a  high  consideration 
for  him.     I  had  seen  him  at  the  Swiss 
students'    club  several  times,    and  had 
observed  him  among  the  jolly  students. 
He  liked  merry  society,  but  he  himself 
was  in  general  reserved  and  never  noisy. 
He  picked  out  the  gifted  and  highly 
learned  students,  and  would  not  waste 
his     time    in    ordinary     conversation. 
Often,  when  he  saw  a  number  of  stu- 
dents going  off  on  some  empty  pleasure- 
trip,  he  said  to  me  :  <  There  they  go  with 
the  other  fellows:   their  motto  is,  Ich 


36  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

gehe  mit  den  andern.  I  will  go  my  own 
way,  Mr.  Dinkel, — and  not  alone:  I 
will  be  a  leader  of  others.' ?? 

And  at  twenty- one  years  old  the  boy 
wrote  to  his  father  :  "I  wish  it  may  be 
said  of  Louis  Agassiz  that  he  was  the 
first  naturalist  of  his  time,  a  good  citizen, 
and  a  good  son,  beloved  of  those  who 
knew  him.  I  feel  within  myself  the 
strength  of  a  whole  generation  to  work 
toward  this  end,  and  I  will  reach  it  if 
the  means  are  not  wanting. " 


III. 

THESE  impressionable  university  years 
determined  Agassiz's  future  life.  He 
went  to  Heidelberg  with  a  strong  taste 
for  natural  history ;  he  left  Munich  de- 
voted heart  and  soul  to  science,  to  give 
his  time  and  strength  unreservedly  to 
her  service  until  the  end.  What  would 
have  happened,  had  he  been  constrained 
to  stay  and  try  commercial  life  at  Neu- 
chAtel,  we  can  hardly  guess. 

At  Heidelberg  the  boy  had  made  his 
first  scientific  friendships.  At  Munich, 
while  still  a  student,  he  accomplished 
his  first  scientific  work,  the  editing  of 
the  Brazilian  Fishes,  for  which  material 
had  been  collected  by  Professor  Spix. 
Professors  Spix  and  Martius  had  been 
sent  by  the  king  of  Bavaria  on  a  scien- 
tific journey  to  Brazil ;  and  the  rich  col- 
lections which  they  had  amassed  in  the 
years  1817-21  had  been  brought  back  to 
Munich,  where  the  scientific  results  were 


38  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

slowly  issuing  from  the  press.  Martins 
liad  the  general  charge  of  the  botanical 
and  Spix  of  the  zoological  departments  ; 
but  Spix's  death  in  1826  left  unfinished 
three  zoological  volumes,  which  were  to 
deal  with  shells,  insects,  and  fishes  re- 
spectively. Martius,  his  surviving  col- 
league, who  as  professor  had  seen  much 
of  the  Cloverleaf,  thought  Louis  Agassiz 
quite  competent  to  act  as  editor  of  the 
volume  on  fishes,  and  offered  him.  the 
work.  It  was  such  a  chance  as  seldom 
comes  to  a  boy  of  twenty-one  5  but  it 
was  a  chance  fairly  earned  by  thorough 
and  eager  labour,  and  opportunities  are 
among  the  things  geniuses  find  and  col- 
lect. 

Besides  Agassiz' s  delight  in  the  thing 
itself,  he  had  another  reason  for  grati- 
tude. Such  public  recognition  and  such 
a  tangible  result  of  his  studies  could  not 
but  affect  his  parents  in  Switzerland, 
whose  attitude  toward  a  purely  scientific 
career  was  still  sceptical.  They  seem  to 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  39 

have  entertained  very  conservative  views 
on  the  possibility  of  self-support  for  a 
man  of  no  profession  except  professor- 
ship, although  they  never  urged  the 
lack  of  practical,  wage -measured  utility 
as  a  reproach  against  knowledge  herself, 
but  only  as  an  excellent  reason  why  their 
own  particular  penniless  Louis  should 
have  a  bread-winning  profession  (like 
that  of  medicine)  as  a  preliminary.  No- 
where in  their  letters  is  there  a  sordid 
ideal  of  success  :  they  never  overvalue 
wealth  or  undervalue  intellectual  pleas- 
ure, but  they  speak  constantly  of  good 
citizenship,  and  of  the  shame  of  depend- 
ence on  others.  Louis  was  already  be- 
trothed to  Cecile  Braun,  and  he  had  no 
dollar  of  income  —  what  was  he  to  do  ? 

His  passionate  desire  to  give  himself 
wholly  to  science,  his  growing  distaste 
for  the  daily  work  of  a  physician,  and 
his  pleading  with  his  parents  give  us  a 
vivid  and  pathetic  picture,  our  feelings 
being  saved  by  our  knowledge  of  the 


40  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

happy  chapters  to  follow.  To  all  he  can 
say,  they  have  but  one  answer  :  Let  him 
first  take  his  medical  degree,  and  then 
discuss  the  next  step.  "  He  was  perhaps 
apt  to  think  that  the  best  medical  teach- 
ing would  be  found  in  connection  with 
the  best  zoological  museum"  ;  and  there 
is  a  delightful  passage  in  one  of  his  later 
letters  to  his  father,  when  he  already 
wrote  himself  M.D.  "I  do  not  believe 
it  important  that  a  young  physician 
should  familiarise  himself  with  a  great 
variety  of  curative  methods,"  remarks 
this  hopeful  young  doctor,  "so  I  try  to 
observe  carefully  the  patient  and  his 
disease,  rather  than  to  remember  the 
medicaments  applied  in  special  cases." 
Agassiz  wanted  the  appearance  of  his 
book  to  be  a  surprise  to  his  parents,  and 
he  was  much  disappointed  that  the  sur- 
prise failed  through  his  having  neglected 
to  bind  a  friend  to  secrecy.  In  every- 
thing else  the  plan  was  perfectly  success- 
ful. Praise  of  their  son's  brilliant  abili- 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  41 

ties,  of  Ms  perseverance,  of  the  esteem  in 
which  he  was  already  held  among  scien- 
tific men, —  this  came  to  his  parents  in 
one  way  and  another.     The  wonderful 
news  of  his  forthcoming  book  was  fol- 
lowed shortly  by  the  book  itself,  brave 
with  coloured  plates  and  Latin  descrip- 
tions.    Added  to  all  this  was  the  affec- 
tionate   obedience    with    which    Louis 
pressed  on  to  the  degree  of  Doctor  of 
Medicine.     He  took    his   degree    brill- 
iantly in  1830  ;  and  this,  although  he 
had  not  only  accomplished  the  work  on 
Brazilian  Fishes  in  his  student  time,  but 
had  also  taken  by  the  way  the  degree 
of  Doctor  of  Philosophy,  which  was  a 
desirable  addition  to  his  name  on  the 
Brazilian  title-page.     The  innocent  ex- 
ultation of  son  and  parents,  first  over 
the  book  and  later  over  the  diploma,  is 
best  given  in  their  own  words:  "Will 
it  not  seem  strange  when  the  largest  and 
finest    book    in   papa's   library  is    one 
written  by  his  Louis  1    Will  it  not  be  as 


42  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

good  as  to  see  liis  prescription  at  the 
apothecary's1?"  "I  hope  yet  to  prove 
to  you  that,  with  a  brevet  of  Doctor  as 
a  guarantee,  Natural  History  may  be  a 
man's  bread-winner  as  well  as  the  de- 
light of  his  life."  "  I  hasten,  my  dear 
son,  to  announce  the  arrival  of  your 
beautiful  work  which  reached  me  on 
Thursday,  from  Geneva.  I  have  no 
terms  in  which  to  express  the  pleasure 
it  has  given  me.  .  .  .  The  old  father 
who  waits  for  you  with  open  heart  and 
arms  sends  you  the  most  tender  greet- 
ing." His  mother  adds:  "I  cannot 
thank  you  enough,  my  dear  Louis,  for 
the  happiness  you  have  given  me  in 
completing  your  medical  examinations, 
and  thus  securing  to  yourself  a  career 
as  safe  as  it  is  honourable.  .  .  .  You  have 
for  my  sake  gone  through  a  long  and 
arduous  task.  Were  it  in  my  power,  I 
would  gladly  reward  you ;  but  I  cannot 
even  say  that  I  love  you  the  more  for  it, 
because  that  is  impossible." 


IY. 

AFTER  the  work  on  Brazilian  Fishes 
was  finished,  and  the  degrees  were  taken, 
two  years  intervened  before  Agassiz  ob- 
tained his  professorship.  There  was  a 
short  visit  to  Vienna,  a  last  semester  at 
Munich,  nine  months  at  home  in  Switzer- 
land, and  nearly  a  year  in  Paris.  In 
Vienna  Agassiz  found  himself  received 
as  a  known  scientific  man  for  whom  no 
letters  of  recommendation  were  neces- 
sary, and  this  surprised  as  much  as  it 
pleased  him.  Some  one  called  him  Ich- 
ihyologus  primus  saeculi,  and  he  saved 
the  ponderous  compliment  to  send  home. 

In  the  autumn  of  1830  he  left  Munich 
for  good,  and  the  Little  Academy  was 
dismantled  of  all  its  trophies.  Most  of 
these,  indeed,  had  already  been  sent 
home,  with  the  suggestion  that  an  uncle 
"perhaps  would  have  the  kindness  to  let 
some  large  shelves  be  put  in  the  little 
upper  room  .  .  .  where,  far  from  being 


44  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

an  annoyance  or  causing  any  smell,  my 
collection,  if  placed  under  glass  or  dis- 
posed of  in  some  other  suitable  manner, 
would  be  an  ornament."  Then  for  a 
year  at  home  he  was  wearying  for  inter- 
course with  his  intellectual  equals  and 
for  access  to  the  treasures  of  a  university 
or  a  great  city.  The  effect  that  Agassiz 
produced  on  those  about  him  comes  out 
in  the  way  his  friends  and  relatives 
urged  their  mites  of  contribution  toward 
sending  their  young  author  to  Paris, 
which  was  now  the  goal  of  his  desire. 
Enough  money  was  raised  to  make  it 
possible,  and  from  December,  1831,  to 
September,  1832,  Agassiz  was  in  Paris. 

The  two  most  interesting  things  in 
this  year  are  again  his  scientific  friend- 
ships. Cuvier,  who  ranked  first  among 
living  French  zoologists,  and  Alexander 
von  Humboldt,  the  leader  of  all  the  sci- 
entific world,  were  both  in  Paris }  and 
it  seems  to  have  needed  little  time  to 
gain  affectionate  recognition  from  both. 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  45 

They  saw  their  own  successor  in  the 
eager  and  penniless  young  author,  and 
as  charming  and  picturesque  as  the 
equal  friendship  of  the  Cloverleaf  are 
the  reverence  and  loyal  affection  of 
Agassiz' s  relation  to  these  older  men, 
and  his  gratitude  for  the  generous  help 
they  offered  him.  It  was  an  interesting 
time,  hardly  two  years  after  the  famous 
dispute  between  Cuvier  and  Geoffroy  St. 
Hilaire ;  and  the  echoes  of  that  discus- 
sion were  still  sounding.  Humboldt 
used  himself  to  attend  one  course  of 
Cuvier' s  lectures,  where  Agassiz  often 
secured  the  seat  beside  him,  and  heard 
his  whispered  comments  on  Cuvier's  pas- 
sionate advocacy  of  one  set  of  doctrines. 
But  homesickness  begins  to  show  itself 
very  clearly  in  Agassiz' s  letters  home. 
Alexander  Braun  was  also  in  Paris  5  but, 
as  each  advanced  in  his  specialty,  their 
work  could  not  be  so  much  in  common. 
It  is  evident  that  Agassiz  was  somewhat 
frightened  in  Paris  by  the  bigness  and 


46  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

coldness  of  the  world  and  his  own  unim- 
portance in  it.  In  Munich  he  had  been 
a  leader,  but  in  Munich  every  one  was 
poor.  In  Paris  there  was  wealth  and 
position  even  among  scientific  men,  and 
Agassiz's  poverty  was  much  more  notice- 
able. He  had  about  forty  dollars  a 
month ;  a  draughtsman  was  to  him  the 
first  of  necessary  expenses,  and  his  work 
had  become  such  that  only  the  museums 
of  a  large  city  could  supply  the  proper 
collections  of  fossil  fishes.  He  lived  in 
terror  of  being  forced  to  give  up  work. 
He  had  no  presentable  coat  for  evening 
wear,  and  in  writing  home  he  confessed 
that  his  delay  in  sending  some  book  to 
his  brother  meant  that  its  price  would 
have  left  him  absolutely  penniless. 

Now  that  he  stands  at  the  parting  of 
the  ways  between  medicine  and  zoology, 
his  attempts  to  make  science  pay  its  own 
expenses  are  interesting.  The  first  step 
was  to  find  a  professorship,  but  this 
was  by  no  means  all.  Teaching,  how- 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  47 

ever  delightful,  was  not  all  lie  sought, 
and  investigations  cost  money  in  the 
making  and  in  the  publishing  too. 
The  Brazilian  Fishes  had  introduced  him 
to  a  scientific  publisher  who  might  pos- 
sibly be  induced  to  purchase  works 
which  were  properly  laid  before  him. 
Agassiz's  specialty  was  chosen  —  he  was 
deeply  interested  in  ichthyology  —  and 
for  some  years  it  had  been  his  purpose 
to  write  a  work  upon  Fresh-water 
Fishes.  To  this  plan  he  had  added  a 
still  larger  and  more  ambitious  project. 
This  was  the  publication  of  a  Natural 
History  of  Fossil  Fishes.  Palaeontology 
was  then  so  new  a  science  that  the  sys- 
tematic treatment  of  extinct  forms  along 
with  living  species  had  hardly  begun. 
The  fossil  specimens  were  scattered 
through  the  museums  of  Europe,  and 
great  expense  would  be  necessary  in  trav- 
elling and  collating  material.  A  more 
sober  judgment  would  have  shrunk  from 
attempting  the  task;  and  the  world  may 


48  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

congratulate  itself  that  Agassiz's  youth 
and  genius  conspired  so  often,  first  to 
blind  his  judgment  of  probable  results, 
and  then  to  bend  the  results  themselves 
aside  from  all  probability. 

Two  incidents  stand  out  from  his  Pa- 
risian experiences,  connected  with  two 
generous  gifts  from  Cuvier  and  Hum- 
boldt,  respectively.  One  was  a  wholly 
unexpected  gift  of  money,  generously  and 
delicately  offered  by  Humboldt,  which 
came  at  the  very  darkest  hour,  when  it 
had  crossed  even  Agassiz's  mind  that  he 
might  be  forced  by  fear  of  absolute  star- 
vation to  abandon  museums,  draughts- 
men, teachers,  and  all,  and  go  home  to 
live  more  cheaply  as  a  physician  or  a 
tutor  in  Switzerland.  It  was  only  two 
hundred  dollars,  but  ihe  effect  it  pro- 
duced was  enormous.  "My  benefactor 
and  friend  —  it  is  too  much  !  .  .  .  My 
parents  will  now  readily  consent  that  I 
should  devote  myself  entirely  to  science. ' 7 
And  then  to  his  parents:  "Oh!  if  my 


LOUIS   AGASSIZ  49 

mother  would  forget  for  one  moment  that 
this  is  the  celebrated  M.  de  Humboldt, 
and  find  courage  to  write  him  only  a  few 
lines,  how  grateful  I  should  be  to  her !  I 
think  it  would  come  better  from  her  than 
from  papa,  who  would  do  it  more  cor- 
rectly, no  doubt,  but  perhaps  not  quite 
as  I  should  like.  Humboldt  is  so  good,  so 
indulgent,  that  you  should  not  hesitate, 
dear  mother.'7  .  .  . 

The  other  gift  was  of  a  different  sort, 
but  of  even  greater  generosity ;  and  it 
was  as  thankfully  and  modestly  re- 
ceived. Cuvier  had  planned  a  work  on 
fishes  in  general,  and  had  issued  a  circu- 
lar asking  for  general  help  in  collecting 
his  material.  A  year  or  two  before,  it 
had  been  one  of  Agassiz's  minor  ambi- 
tions to  send  so  intelligently  made  a 
collection  of  Swiss  fishes  as  should 
bring  the  contributor's  name  to  Cuvier' s 
notice.  Now  his  hopes  had  gone  fur- 
ther,—  he  had  the  ear  of  the  master  and 
could  ask  advice  for  his  own  work. 


50  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

One  evening  at  M.  Cuvier's  house  —  the 
only  house  where  Agassiz  dared  go 
without  the  evening  dress  which  he 
could  not  afford  to  own  —  the  old  man 
sent  his  secretary  for  the  portfolio  con- 
taining all  his  notes  and  drawings  of 
fossil  fish,  and  gave  it  unreservedly  to 
the  student  whom  he  had  already  made 
free  of  his  private  library  and  working- 
room. 

The  stay  in  Paris  came  to  an  end  when 
a  chair  of  natural  history  was  offered 
Agassiz  at  Neuchatel.  The  salary  guar- 
anteed him  was  about  four  hundred  dol- 
lars ;  but  he  had  strong  reason  to  hope 
that  his  collections  would  be  purchased 
for  the  city.  These  collections  had 
reached  a  very  considerable  money  value, 
and  were  extremely  awkward  possessions 
for  a  private  person  and  a  private  house, 
so  that  this  advantage  would  more  than 
compensate  him  for  a  salary  very  small 
even  on  Agassiz7  s  modest  computation, 
and  perfectly  absurd  according  to  our 
ideas  to-day. 


V. 

AGASSIZ'S  life  falls  into  three  bold 
divisions  —  his  youth  and  studentship, 
his  thirteen  years  as  professor  at  Neu- 
ch&tel,  and  his  later  manhood  in  Amer- 
ica. He  went  to  NeucMtel  in  the 
autumn  of  1832,  and  remained  there 
till  1845,  declining  calls  to  Heidelberg, 
Geneva,  and  Lausanne,  as  afterwards  in 
America  he  declined  invitations  back 
to  Europe.  The  ease  with  which  he 
passed  from  one  subject  to  another  is  a 
curious  contrast  to  this  conservative 
loyalty  when  once  connected  with  an 
institution.  His  greatest  scientific  work 
as  an  investigator  was  done  while  at 
NeucMtel.  In  America  he  occupied  a 
unique  position  as  the  undoubted  scien- 
tific leader  of  a  continent,  the  "  Great 
Professor, "  as  we  were  fond  of  calling 
him ;  and  his  labours  for  the  promotion 
and  popularisation  of  science  were  so 
great  that  even  his  own  researches  are 
somewhat  overshadowed  by  them. 


52  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

Neuch&tel  was  at  this  time  a  Prussian 
principality  which  had  entered  into  the 
Swiss  Confederation.  From  the  king  of 
of  Prussia,  through  Humboldt  as  minister, 
Agassiz  more  than  once  received  gener- 
ous assistance  and  encouragement.  The 
college  was  not  an  important  one  5  and 
the  chair  in  natural  history  had  been 
founded  in  order  that  Agassiz  might 
occupy  it;  so  that  there  was  nothing 
waiting  him  in  the  way  of  material 
equipment.  There  was  no  scientific 
apparatus,  no  museum,  no  proper  lect- 
ure-rooms ;  but  there  was  a  home  pride 
in  Agassiz,  and  a  desire  to  meet  his 
wishes  and  to  keep  him  in  Neuch&tel,  if 
possible. 

As  a  professor,  his  success  was  immedi- 
ate. "He  had,  indeed,  now  entered 
upon  the  occupation  Vhich  was  to  be 
from  youth  to  old  age  the  delight  of  his 
life.  Teaching  was  a  passion  with  him, 
and  his  power  over  his  pupils  might  be 
measured  by  his  own  enthusiasm. "  His 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  53 

courses  began  by  a  very  successful  pub- 
lic lecture  on  the  Eelations  between  Dif- 
ferent Branches  of  Natural  History.  This 
was  a  characteristic  choice  of  subject. 
Agassiz  was  fond  of  ignoring  arbitrary 
divisions.  "  Facts  in  his  hands  fell  into 
their  orderly  relation  as  parts  of  a  con- 
nected whole,  and  were  never  presented 
merely  as  special  or  isolated  phenom- 
ena." His  influence  was  felt  outside 
the  lecture-room  in  many  ways.  Popu- 
lar lectures  were  offered  for  those  who 
were  not  students.  Classes  for  children 
sprang  up.  His  collections  formed  the 
nucleus  of  an  unusually  excellent  city 
museum.  The  Neuch&tel  Society  of  Nat- 
ural Sciences,  organised  within  a  month 
of  his  arrival,  was  soon  of  real  impor- 
tance. Agassiz' s  boundless  and  almost 
incredible  energy  gave  to  the  world 
work  after  work  on  various  subjects. 
He  attracted  other  men  since  famous  on 
their  own  account,  and  his  establishment 
was  called  a  scientific  factory  always  in 


54  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

full  blast.  Desor  was  Ms  assistant  at 
Neuch&tel ;  and  Vogt,  the  laughter- 
loving  materialist,  was  also  (so  sarcastic 
is  fate)  trained  by  Agassiz.  Yogt  may 
really  be  said  to  exist  in  literature  as 
well  as  in  science  through  his  much- 
refuted  dictum  that  "the  brain  secretes 
thought  as  the  liver  secretes  bile.7'  The 
number  of  Agassiz' s  aids  and  pupils  who 
became  naturalists  of  repute  speaks  for 
itself,  as  does  the  number  who  chose  to 
follow  him  to  America.  Let  us  add  that 
the  boy  employed  at  Neuchatel  to  run 
on  errands  and  clean  the  boots  became 
a  scientific  man,  and  that,  when  Agassiz 
left  NeucMtel,  the  town,  after  having 
been  for  thirteen  years  a  centre  of  scien- 
tific activity,  relapsed  at  once  into  its 
normal  and  placid  uniinportance. 

As  for  the  vacations,  three  journeys 
to  England  and  many  summers  spent 
among,  on,  and  even  in  the  Alpine 
glaciers,  give  interesting  reading.  The 
scientific  and  personal  interest  are  al- 


LOUIS   AGASSIZ  55 

ways  intertwined,  for  with  Agassiz  his 
work  was  his  life,  and  everything  smacks 
of  the  investigator.  His  poverty  is  al- 
ways conspicuous.  He  is  continually 
trying  to  earn  something,  but  always 
under  a  sort  of  protest  at  the  disagree- 
able necessity.  But,  where  the  end  was 
scientific,  no  expense  staggered  Louis 
Agassiz.  "  These  things  are  needed  for 
the  work/'  was  a  sufficient  answer.  His 
first  publisher  having  died,  and  the  suc- 
cessors hesitating  to  assume  responsibility 
for  the  Fossil  Fishes,  Agassiz  decided  to 
publish  at  his  own  expense;  and,  as 
plates  could  be  more  satisfactorily  ex- 
ecuted under  his  own  eye,  he  promptly 
founded  and  made  himself  responsible 
for  the  maintenance  of  a  lithographing 
and  printing  establishment  in  Neuch&tel. 
After  this  it  is  an  anti- climax  to  refer  to 
the  guides  and  scientific  apparatus  taken 
to  the  glaciers  or  to  the  artists  sent  to 
England  to  sketch  fossil  fishes.  With  a 
yearly  deficit  distinctly  larger  than  one's 


56  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

largest  income,  most  professors  would  be 
discouraged  long  before  thirteen  years 
were  up  ;  but  Agassiz  never  was  one  to 
be  carked  by  cares.  Where  there  is  one 
and  only  one  chief  object,  there  is  at 
least  no  wearing  contest  for  the  right  of 
way,  and  by  so  much  is  the  man  nearer 
success.  Whether  he  could  afford  it  or 
not,  whether  the  money  had  been  paid 
or  not,  whether  the  deluge  was  coming 
or  not,  the  main  object  was  accom- 
plished. The  apparatus  was  there,  the 
books  were  written,  the  lithographs  were 
given  to  the  world  5  and  other  matters 
were  trifling  in  comparison. 

The  careless  poverty  which  was  so 
picturesque  in  the  student  of  Munich, 
breakfasting  off  a  glass  of  beer  in  order 
to  keep  two  draughtsmen  busy  among  the 
fishes  who  shared  his  bedroom,  is  per- 
haps more  open  to  criticism  in  the  older 
professor  of  NeucMtel,  with  a  dignified 
position  to  maintain,  and  a  wife  and 
children  besides.  As  soon  as  Agassiz7  s 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  57 

collections  were  bought  and  paid  for,  he 
had  married  the  sister  of  Alexander 
Braun.  A  son  and  two  daughters  were 
born  to  him ;  and  the  son  Alexander 
afterward  showed  the  same  scientific 
ability  as  his  father  and  uncle. 

"With  Agassiz's  more  intimate  personal 
life  at  this  time  the  public  has  little 
concern.  But  there  is  one  aspect  of 
private  life  which  closely  concerns  any 
biographer  :  we  mean  the  way  in  which 
private  circumstances  and  personal  char- 
acter affect  work  which  is  properly 
public.  Agassiz's  whole  achievement 
was  coloured  by  his  character.  This 
was  first  of  all  through  the  extraordinary 
indifference  to  expense  which  we  have 
just  remarked.  In  the  next  place,  in 
looking  at  a  list  of  his  publications,  we 
immediately  notice  how  his  works  over- 
lap one  another.  He  generally  pub- 
lished in  parts,  doling  his  results  out  to 
the  public  bit  by  bit ;  and,  if  a  new  sub- 
ject presented  itself  as  needing  investiga- 


58  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

tion,  he  would  attack  it  without  any 
regard  to  how  many  irons  he  had  al- 
ready in  the  fire.  Eegarding  himself 
always  as  a  servant  of  Science,  he  put  his 
hand  to  whatever  would  serve  her  best 
at  the  moment,  declining  new  work 
because  it  interfered  with  the  old  no 
more  than  a  man  in  public  office  would 
decline  to  consider  a  public  need  on  the 
plea  that  his  time  is  fully  occupied 
already.  This  resulted  in  a  number  of 
incomplete  works,  and  in  an  immense 
number  of  short  scientific  papers  on  this 
subject  and  that. 

That  such  a  method  hurts  a  man's 
own  reputation  is  evident,  but  whether 
his  total  service  to  science  is  lessened  is 
a  matter  for  debate.  And  this  seems  to 
explain  the  fact  that  so  great  a  natural- 
ist was  not  more  grieved  by  unfinished 
work.  Agassiz  was  utterly  without  what 
has  been  called  the  lust  of  finishing.  It 
was  not  that  he  lost  interest  in  any  sub- 
ject under  the  sun,  but  that  the  over- 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  59 

whelming  interest  of  something  new 
diverted  him  from  his  former  pursuit, 
to  which  he  always  expected  to  return. 
And,  as  akin  to  this,  we  notice  the 
variety  of  his  work  and  his  readiness  to 
take  up  any  new  subject,  without  allow- 
ing himself  to  be  bound  to  his  specialty. 
Agassiz  had  a  horror  of  intellectual  red 
tape,  and  a  lively  interest  in  everything 
beneath  the  visiting  moon.  His  work 
on  glaciers  was  wholly  different  from 
the  other  things  he  had  in  hand,  and 
yet  his  name  is  as  intimately  associated 
with  the  ice  age  as  it  is  with  fossil  fishes. 
Science  is  one,  as  he  was  fond  of  repeat- 
ing ;  yet  he  used  to  say  also  that  no 
investigator  could  afford  to  be  without 
a  specialty,  lest  he  miss  a  proper  stand- 
ard for  exact  and  for  comprehensive 
knowledge.  One  subject,  he  said,  should 
be  like  a  surveyor's  arbitrary  base  line, 
to  which  all  other  lines  are  referred  for 
comparison. 
Next  in  the  personal  habits  that  af- 


60  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

fected  his  work  comes  the  habit  of 
always  working  in  partnership.  This 
was  no  accident,  but  a  deep-seated  trait 
of  character.  As  Lowell  says  of  him, 
"He  basked  and  bourgeoned  in  copart- 
nery"  5  and  we  have  already  remarked 
that  this  fell  in  with  his  love  of  teaching. 
Of  an  affectionate  intellect,  he  was  al- 
ways the  head  of  a  troop  of  assistants, 
sometimes  paid  and  sometimes  voluntary. 
Money  evidently  seemed  to  Agassiz  as 
minor  a  question  where  another  man 
was  concerned  as  he  had  always  made 
it  for  himself ;  and  this  unstable  busi- 
ness basis  became  the  source  of  serious 
anxiety  for  him  and  deep  dissatisfaction 
for  his  fellow- workers.  One  embittered 
assistant,  who  has  sketched  the  scientific 
factory  at  NeucMtel,  remarks  that  the 
arrangement  between  Agassiz  and  his 
aids  was  that,  if  they  needed  money  at  a 
time  when  he  had  any,  he  should  give 
them  some,  and  that  in  any  case  several 
of  them  were  to  be  provided  for  at  his 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  61 

table.  The  opportunity  that  Agassiz 
offered  these  young  men  was  precisely 
that  which  he  himself  would  most  have 
longed  for  in  his  younger  time,  and  he 
interpreted  other  men's  desires  in  the 
light  of  his  own  character.  What  would 
not  he  have  given  for  such  a  chance  to 
do  original  work  under  the  immediate 
eye  of  a  master,  in  constant  partnership 
with  a  celebrated  investigator  f 


YI. 

OF  the  scientific  writings  which  Ag- 
assiz  poured  out  from  Neuchatel,  the 
greatest  and  most  important  was  his  im- 
mense work  on  Fossil  Fishes.  From 
1833  to  1843  this  was  issued,  plates  and 
text  not  always  keeping  pace,  and 
monographs  on  special  fauna  following 
as  an  appendix.  It  offered  a  wholly 
new  classification  of  fishes,  making  the 
nature  of  their  scales  of  prime  impor- 
tance, and  thus  facilitating  the  identifi- 
cation of  fossil  fragments.  Of  course, 
this  in  itself  is  only  a  minor  aim ;  but 
Agassiz's  fine  " zoological  tact"  made 
him  recognise  those  differences  which 
accompany  other  differences  through- 
out the  whole  creature,  and  indicate  the 
really  natural  classification.  How  pro- 
found was  his  knowledge  of  the  subject 
is  illustrated  by  the  anecdote  of  his 
constructing  from  a  single  scale  a  fish 
such  as  might  belong  to  strata  where  no 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  63 

fish,  were  then  known.  He  was  asked  to 
perform  the  feat  at  a  meeting  of  the 
British  Association,  without  being  told 
that  a  fossil  had  been  found.  As  he  fin- 
ished his  drawing  of  what  the  fish  must 
have  been,  some  one  drew  back  a  curtain 
which  had  concealed  the  specimen  ;  and 
a  round  of  applause  broke  the  decorum 
of  the  meeting. 

The  generalisations  which  Agassiz 
drew  from  his  study  of  fishes  made  him, 
in  spite  of  himself,  one  of  the  greatest 
contributors  to  the  coming  theory  of 
evolution  by  descent,  "the  "bete  noire  of 
his  later  days."  One  of  the  greatest 
gains  of  all  modern  science,  the  law  that 
the  development  of  the  individual  animal 
shows  in  brief  the  development  of  the 
race,  depends  more  upon  Agassiz  than 
upon  any  other  one  worker.  This  law  he 
followed  in  detail,  and  proved  beyond 
question  for  the  class  of  fishes  5  and  this 
he  recognised  as  the  greatest  result  of  his 
research.  Long  afterward  he  said:  "I 


64  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

have  devoted  my  whole  life  to  the  study 
of  Nature,  and  yet  a  single  sentence  may 
express  all  that  I  have  done.  I  have 
shown  that  there  is  a  correspondence 
between  the  succession  of  fishes  in  geo- 
logical times  and  the  different  stages  of 
their  growth  in  the  egg  —  this  is  all." 
To-day  this  is  taken  as  due  to  inheri- 
tance, and  as  one  of  the  strongest  rea- 
sons for  believing  in  the  change  of 
species  by  descent.  So,  again,  with 
Agassiz's  "  synthetic  or  prophetic 
types,"  uniting  characteristics  which 
were  afterward  separated  and  confined 
each  to  its  own  group  —  as,  for  in- 
stance, the  early  creatures,  who  were 
half  like  the  reptiles  and  half  like  the 
fishes  —  modern  interpretation  would, 
of  course,  call  these  the  ancestors  of 
both.  To  express  the  law  of  succession 
and  development  of  fishes  during  all 
geologic  epochs  was  his  aim,  as  it  is  that 
of  every  evolutionist  5  and  in  the  modern 
theory,  Agassiz's  results  have  become  the 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  65 

head  of  the  corner,  although  for  expla- 
nation he  passed  directly,  instead  of  in- 
directly, to  the  Creator,  declaring  that 
such  laws  were  u  incontestable  proofe  of 
the  existence  of  a  superior  intelligence, 
whose  power  alone  could  have  estab- 
lished such  an  order  of  things.77 

The  execution  of  the  Fossil  Fishes,  es- 
pecially the  lithographing  of  the  plates, 
was  of  remarkable  excellence.  No  ex- 
pense had  been  spared,  and  the  result 
was  accomplished.  We  have  dwelt  upon 
this  work  because  it  was  both  the  most 
important  and  the  most  finished  of  his 
books  —  finished  indeed  as  far  as  such 
a  thing  could  be  finished,  when  every 
year  was  producing  new  specimens,  and 
making  Agassiz  plan  new  appendices. 
But  this  was  only  one  of  a  score  of  im- 
portant contributions  to  science.  His 
Fresh-water  Fishes,  issued  in  much  the 
same  style,  was  kept  in  progress  at 
the  same  time ;  and  here  the  mon- 
ograph on  the  Salmonidse  stands  com- 


66  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

plete.  In  the  laboratory  at  NeuchAtel 
were  carried  on  some  of  the  earliest 
experiments  in  artificial  fish-breeding  — 
a  subject  which  has  now  grown  to  vast 
commercial  importance.  The  fossil  echi- 
noderms  of  the  Jura  had  not  been  ade- 
quately treated ;  and,  therefore,  Agassiz 
could  not  resist  writing  an  extensive 
monograph  on  the  subject,  which  soon 
interested  him  in  living  echinoderms. 
It  occurred  to  him  that  the  inner  shape 
of  shells  was  very  little  known,  and  that 
castings  to  give  at  least  the  outline  of  the 
inhabitant  would  be  of  special  value  for 
the  extinct  mollusks  who  have  left  us 
shells  and  nothing  else.  No  sooner  was 
it  thought  than  done.  Experiments  on 
metallic  alloys  which  can  -fill  without 
shattering,  the  preparation  of  shells  to 
act  as  moulds,  and  then  the  careful  cast- 
ing of  models  —  all  were  carried  on  under 
Agassiz's  eye  and  at  his  expense  ;  but  in 
this  particular  case  there  were  actually 
some  pecuniary  returns,  as  various  mu- 


LOUIS   AGASSIZ  67 

seums  wished  for  a  set  of  such  models, 
and  were  willing  to  pay  for  them.  Had 
any  scientific  man  or  museum  professed 
inability  to  pay,  whether  for  models  or 
for  books,  Agassiz  would  have  provided 
what  was  wanted,  as  a  matter  of  course. 
Humboldt  remonstrated  on  his  lavish  dis- 
tribution of  complimentary  copies  of  his 
books ;  but  it  is  always  the  same  story. 
Agassiz  had  one  object:  that  was  the 
advancement  of  science.  If  he  could 
avoid  falling  bankrupt  by  the  way,  it 
was  of  course  more  agreeable  5  but  a 
man  must  not  think  too  constantly  of 
himself. 

His  unfortunate  translation  into  French 
and  German  of  an  English  book  on  Con- 
chology  — unfortunate  because  it  appar- 
ently did  not  occur  to  him  that  the 
author  regarded  the  thing  as  a  money- 
bringing  investment  —  stands  almost 
alone  in  that  sort  of  work.  Of  a  new 
kind,  again,  are  the  Nomenclator  Zoologicus 
and  the  BibliograpJiia  Zoologiae,  an  index 


68  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

of  species  and  of  writings,  prepared  be- 
cause such  lists  were  wanted,  though 
such  compilation  and  work  among  books 
instead  of  beasts  was  singularly  out  of 
Agassiz's  vein.  The  geology  of  the 
Jura,  too,  and  the  construction  of  relief 
maps  of  part  of  Switzerland,  were  sub- 
jects pursued  in  the  "  scientific  factory, " 
though  by  Agassiz's  assistants  more  than 
by  himself.  But  far  more  important 
than  any  of  this  work  except  the  Fossil 
Fishes  were  the  investigations  which  we 
have  left  to  the  last  —  those  studies  of 
the  glaciers  which  have  given  a  whole 
new  chapter  to  the  history  of  the  earth. 


VII. 

AGASSIZ'S  great  service  to  geology 
proper  (apart  from  palaeontology  or 
the  study  of  fossils)  is  that  —  thanks  to 
him  and  his  coworkers —  ice  has  been 
introduced  as  a  great  geologic  agent, 
almost  as  important  as  fire  and  water. 
"The  peasant  had  told  his  strange  story 
of  boulders  carried  on  the  back  of  the 
ice,  of  the  alternate  retreat  and  advance 
of  glaciers,  now  shrinking  to  narrower 
limits,  now  plunging  forward  into  ad- 
joining fields  by  some  unexplained 
power. "  The  Alpine  herdsman  and  the. 
guide  knew  the  moraines  and  dikes,  the 
polished  or  furrowed  rocks  of  their  own 
valley  5  but  educated  men  were  not 
familiar  with  these  things,  and  did  not 
recognise  them  when  the  ice  was  not 
there  to  draw  attention  to  its  own  doings. 
The  idea  that  such  phenomena  were  not 
restricted  to  regions  where  glaciers  now 
are  found,  but  that  traces  of  glacial 


70  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

action  could  be  seen  over  enormous 
tracts  of  the  earth7  s  surface,  perhaps 
including  regions  in  the  tropics,  and  that 
in  countries  now  temperate  there  might 
be  discovered  not  only  the  remains  of 
tropical  fauna  and  flora,  but  also  distinct 
indications  of  a  period  of  arctic  cold  — 
this  was  as  new  as  startling.  Geologists 
looked  at  each  other  with  a  wild  sur- 
mise. The  possibility  had  been  glanced 
at  before,  not  by  mere  irresponsible 
theorisers,  but  by  such  a  master  in 
theoretical  suggestion  as  Goethe.  But 
neither  a  lucky  guess  nor  a  learned 
hypothesis  can  take  rank  in  science  with 
a  theory  supported  by  accumulated  evi- 
dence from  observation. 

In  1836  Agassiz  spent  the  summer 
with  his  friend,  Jean-  de  Charpentier, 
and  brought  the  daring  of  youth  and 
genius  to  help  the  strange,  new  ideas 
that  Charpentier  hardly  ventured  to 
suggest  above  a  whisper.  A  new  world 
for  research  was  flashed  before  his  eyes. 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  71 

The  boulders  and  scored  rocks  in  the 
valley  of  Bex  were  so  many  Eosetta 
stones,  and  he  took  up  the  challenge  of 
Nature  again  without  hesitation.  The 
fish  might  wait  a  little  longer.  If  his 
winters  were  given  to  them,  he  could 
still  put  in  his  summers  upon  the  glacier. 
In  1837,  when  the  Helvetic  Society  of 
Natural  History  met  at  Neuch&tel,  he 
delivered  the  address  on  a  glacial  period, 
which  marks  the  admission  of  a  new  sub- 
ject to  general  scientific  attention.  So 
very  great  an  innovation  could  not  but 
meet  with  a  demand  for  very  strong  evi- 
dence^ along  with  doubt,  sometimes  scorn- 
ful, until  years  of  research  should  accu- 
mulate the  evidence.  Humboldt,  much 
as  he  respected  Agassiz's  judgment,  was 
sceptical.  Yon  Buch,  the  leading  German 
geologist,  " raged,"  and  invoked  the 
shade  of  De  Saussure.  "  0  sancte  De 
8aussure,  era  pro  nobis ! ?  ?  Caricature 
was  easy ;  and  there  was  plenty  of  it. 
But  Agassiz  was  supported  by  a  firm 


72  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

conviction  that  he  was  on  the  right 
track,  and  to-day  the  world  acknowl- 
edges that  he  was  right  and  it  was 
wrong. 

The  six  summers  from  1838  to  1843  he 
spent  in  the  Alps,  following  far  and  wide 
the  hieroglyphics  written  by  past  gla- 
ciers, and  then  turning  his  attention  to 
the  constitution  and  action  of  glaciers  as 
they  are  to-day.  A  permanent  station 
was  established  on  the  glacier  of  the 
Aar.  A  large,  overhanging  boulder  of 
the  medial  moraine  just  below  the  junc- 
tion of  two  glaciers  was  transformed  into 
a  rude  hut,  and  christened  the  Hotel 
des  Neuch&telois ;  and  its  name  was  soon 
known  throughout  Europe.  Here,  in 
cold  and  privation  and  -enthusiastic 
happiness,  Agassiz  and  his  crew  spent 
their  vacations.  Long  afterwards  it  was 
a  saying  in  Cambridge  that  no  overcoat 
was  necessary  when  passing  Agassiz' s 
house,  such  a  genial  warmth  of  good 
will  glowed  from  its  very  windows.  And 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  73 

so  it  must  have  been  in  Switzerland, 
where  laughter  and  jollity,  following  on 
science,  are  what  travellers  report  from 
the  H6tel  des  Neuchatelois.  Though  of 
world- wide  reputation,  the  professor  en- 
joyed Alpine  risk  and  adventure  like 
a  boy.  He  was  barely  thirty  when  he 
gave  his  first  glacial  discourse ;  and  he 
wore  his  weight  of  learning  lightly,  like 
a  snowflake.  It  was  not  necessary  for 
glacial  investigation  that  he  should  scale 
the  maiden  peak  of  the  Jungfrau  5  but 
up  it  he  went,  and  stood  upon  the  two- 
foot  summit,  balancing  with  his  life  in 
his  hand.  Whether  it  had  ever  been 
ascended  before,  is  a  question  ;  certainly, 
it  had  not  been  attempted  for  many 
years. 

In  the  same  summer  he  took  a  risk  in 
the  opposite  direction,  and  had  himself 
lowered  deep  into  a  crevasse,  in  order 
to  observe  thev  " banded,"  or  "rib- 
boned," structure  of  the  glacier.  That 
he  came  back  alive  from  this  "descent 


74  LOUIS    AGASSIZ 

into  hell,"  as  Ms  horrified  mother  terms 
it,  is  matter  for  surprise.  He  was  so 
absorbed  in  watching  the  structure  of 
the  icy  walk  between  which  he  was 
gliding  that  he  did  not  notice  the 
water  beneath  him  until,  at  a  depth  of 
one  hundred  and  twenty-five  feet,  he 
was  suddenly  plunged  into  an  ice-cold 
stream.  His  hasty  signal  being  misun- 
derstood at  the  surface,  he  was  lowered 
further  and  completely  submerged. 
Whether  at  that  supreme  moment  he  got 
one  last  reading  of  the  thermometer  he 
does  not  say,  but  that  day  he  read  no 
more ;  and  the  huge  stalactites  of  ice 
far  above  him,  against  which  the  rope 
,  was  chafing,  and  the  fall  of  a  single  one 
of  which  would  certainly  crush  the 
intruder  to  death,  dic^  cause  some  mo- 
mentary anxiety  even  to  the  optimistic 
Agassiz  in  his  shivering  upward  flight. 

Plans  were  made  for  a  great  glacial 
treatise  in  three  volumes,  each  volume 
to  be  worked  out  in  detail  by  one  man. 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  75 

The  erratic  boulders  which  were  scat- 
tered over  Switzerland  were  to  be  sorted, 
mapped,  traced  back,  every  one,  to  the 
quarry  whence  it  came ;  and  the  same 
was  to  be  attempted  on  a  less  complete 
scale  for  other  regions  outside  Switzer- 
land. Agassiz's  own  volume  was  to  be 
a  study  of  the  glacier  itself,  as  in  action 
to-day ;  and  many  experiments  on  the 
grinding,  crawling  mass  were  made  with 
boring  -  holes,  coloured  liquids  intro- 
duced into  the  ice,  and  rows  of  stakes 
set  across  the  glacier  to  show  by  their 
deflection  the  rate  of  flow  and  place  of 
swiftest  current  in  the  unwieldy  river, 
whose  complicated  motions  in  its  ir- 
regular channel  were  often  exactly  op- 
posed to  expectation.  But  nothing  ac- 
complished on  the  physical  side  could 
compare  in  importance  with  what  was 
ascertained  on  the  historical  side.  Ag- 
assiz  could  soon  recognise  traces  of 
glacial  action  as  a  hunter  knows  the 
marks  of  his  game.  In  his  first  visits  to 


76  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

England  in  1834  and  1835  he  was  re- 
ceived as  an  ichthyologist ;  but  when  he 
went  again,  in  1840  and  in  1846,  it  was 
to  find  everywhere  traces  of  extinct  gla- 
ciers, to  explain  in  a  word  phenomena 
that  had  puzzled  everybody,  and  to  con- 
vince some  of  the  English  geologists  out 
of  hand.  The  theory  of  an  ice  age  grew  : 
the  sheet  of  ice  asserted  to  have  passed 
over  some  parts  of  Europe  assumed  more 
and  more  startling  dimensions,  while 
ridicule  and  opposition  diminished  in 
inverse  ratio.  To-day  no  one  doubts 
the  main  facts :  the  explanation  is  yet 
to  be  given. 

So  far  as  we  know,  Agassiz  formed 
no  opinion  about  the  possible  causes  of 
a  glacial  period.  It  is  one  of  those 
large  questions  unencumbered  by  data 
which  invite  irresponsible  theorising. 
Periodic  changes  in  the  elongation  of 
the  earth's  orbit  or  in  the  inclination  of 
its  axis  might  cause  a  cosmic  summer 
and  winter  (in  which  case  the  ice  age 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  77 

will,  of  course,  return),  or  there  may 
have  been  abrupt  changes  in  the  consti- 
tution of  the  earth  herself  and  a  change 
in  the  geographical  situation  of  the 
pole.  Not  much  is  known  of  the  geol- 
ogy of  the  arctic  regions,  and  it  is  not 
even  absolutely  sure  whether  the  glacial 
period  was  one  of  simultaneous  cold 
over  the  whole  earth.  Geologists  are 
not  at  one  as  to  whether  several  distinct 
periods  or  only  one  period  with  inter- 
ruptions can  be  traced.  Geologically 
speaking,  the  time  was  extremely  re- 
cent —  it  has  been  put  within  the  exist- 
ence of  mankind.  Such  a  sheet  of  ice 
as  that  which  covered  the  North  Ameri- 
can continent  would  distinctly  alter  the 
level  of  the  ocean ;  and  for  this  an 
immense  accumulation  of  snow  is  neces- 
sary, while  meteorology  is  still  so  far 
from  being  an  exact  science  that  her 
best  men  shrink  from  saying  what 
would  be  the  effect  of  great  changes  in 
the  distribution  of  land  and  water,  and 


78  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

of  the  mountain  ranges  against  which 

clouds  discharge  themselves. 

To  sum  up,  many  causes  have  been 
suggested  which  might  have  produced 
unusual  cold ;  but  whether  any  one  of 
them  did  so  or  did  not  is  an  unsolved 
question.  Geology,  meteorology,  and 
astronomy  alike  are  under  examination. 


VIII. 

IT  was  in  1842  that  Agassiz  began  to 
think  of  going  to  America,  where  he  did 
go  four  years  later.  He  had  hoped  to 
accompany  the  Prince  of  Canino  (one 
of  several  scientific  men  produced  by  the 
house  of  Bonaparte)  5  but,  as  it  turned 
out,  the  prince  was  prevented,  and 
Agassiz  went  alone  in  1846.  The  plan 
had  three  aspects  as  finances  progressed 
from  bad  to  worse.  At  first  it  was 
a  vacation  scheme,  at  Agassiz' s  own 
expense  and  for  his  pleasure  ;  then  the 
prince  offered  to  pay  the  expenses;  and, 
finally,  it  became  a  forlorn  hope  for  the 
raising  of  funds  to  discharge  Agassiz7  s 
increasing  debt.  The  time  was  not  yet 
when  a  celebrated  man  could  gain  a  fort- 
une in  a  summer  by  exhibiting  himself 
upon  American  platforms  ;  but  still  lect- 
urers were  better  paid  here  than  in 
Europe,  and  Agassiz  believed  that  he 
might  regain  his  pecuniary  credit,  with- 


80  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

out  hurting  his  scientific  work.  We 
note  an  occasion  when  his  hopeful  ex- 
pectations were  actually  surpassed  by 
the  event.  The  King  of  Prussia  (always 
through  Humboldt)  came  to  his  help 
again  with  a  timely  offer  of  some  three 
thousand  dollars  to  be  spent  in  travel 
for  scientific  purposes  ;  and  the  Lowell 
Institute,  to  which  America  has  been 
indebted  for  so  many  visits  from  eminent 
men,  never  did  a  better  thing  than  when 
it  brought  Agassiz  to  Boston. 

He  promised  to  return  to  Neuch&tel  — 
still,  he  speaks  of  preparation  for  "a 
journey  of  several  years'  duration/*  and 
he  spent  his  last  winter  in  the  unusual 
task  of  finishing  and  setting  in  order 
everything  with  which  he  was  concerned. 
The  BiUiograpJiia  and  Nomendator  upon 
which  he  worked  that  last  year  seem  like 
the  indices  to  a  finished  first  volume  of 
his  life.  During  some  months  at  Paris 
the  JEchinoderms  was  put  into  final  shape, 
so  that  an  assistant  could  attend  to  its 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  81 

publication.  His  volume  on  the  Glaciers 
was  already  out,  so  that,  although  the 
work  was  never  finished,  we  find  the  par- 
adoxical situation  of  Agassiz's  part  com- 
plete, and  that  of  his  coadjutors  wanting. 
In  spite  of  his  repeating  that  he  should 
return  to  Neuchatel,  it  seems  as  if  the 
guiding  genius  of  his  life  had  warned 
him  that  this  was  no  mere  episode.  He 
left  his  wife  and  children  for  the  time 
with  Alexander  Braun  in  Carlsruhe,  but 
he  had  not  been  long  in  America  when 
the  news  reached  him  of  his  wife's  death. 
The  stars  in  their  courses  marked  the 
completion  of  a  period;  and  in  public 
and  private  life  alike,  in  intellect  and  in 
affection,  another  life  begins  as  his  ship 
passes  across  the  ocean  to  a  brave  new 
world. 


IX. 

IN  October,  1846,  Agassiz  arrived  in 
Boston,  and  at  once  sought  out  Mr. 
John  A.  Lowell,  trustee  of  the  Institute 
for  which  he  was  to  give  his  first  course 
of  lectures,  entitled  "The  Plan  of 
Creation. " 

"Never  was  Agassiz' s  power  as  a 
teacher  or  the  charm  of  his  personal 
presence  more  evident  than  in  his  first 
course  of  Lowell  Lectures.  He  was 
unfamiliar  with  the  language.  .  .  .  He 
would  often  have  been  painfully  em- 
barrassed but  for  his  own  simplicity  of 
character.  Thinking  only  of  his  sub- 
ject and  never  of  himself,  when  a  criti- 
cal pause  came,  he  patiently  waited  for 
the  missing  word,  and-  rarely  failed  to 
find  a  phrase  which  was  expressive,  if 
not  technically  correct.  .  .  .  His  foreign 
accent  rather  added  a  charm  to  his 
address ;  and  the  pauses  in  which  he 
seemed  to  ask  the  forbearance  of  the 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  83 

audience,  while  lie  sought  to  translate 
his  thought  for  them,  enlisted  their 
sympathy.  Their  courtesy  never  failed 
him.  .  .  .  When  his  English  was  at  fault, 
he  could  nevertheless  explain  his  mean- 
ing by  illustrations  so  graphic  that  the 
spoken  word  was  hardly  missed.  ...  It 
was  always  pleasant  to  watch  the  eifect 
of  his  drawings  on  the  audience.  When 
showing,  for  instance,  the  correspond- 
ence of  the  articulate  type,  as  a  whole, 
with  the  metamorphoses  of  the  higher 
insects,  he  would  lead  his  listeners  along 
the  successive  phases  of  development, 
talking  as  he  drew  and  drawing  as  he 
talked,  till  suddenly  the  winged  creat- 
ure stood  declared  upon  the  blackboard, 
almost  as  if  it  had  burst  then  and  there 
from  the  chrysalis,  and  the  growing  in- 
terest of  his  hearers  culminated  in  a 
burst  of  delighted  applause. " 

Boston  itself,  the  most  belectured  city 
in  the  world,  had  never  known  a  course 
of  lectures  so  suggestive  and  interesting. 


84  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

A  second  course  on  "Glaciers"  was 
promptly  secured  by  private  subscrip- 
tion, and  Agassiz  then  came  into  great 
demand  as  a  popular  lecturer  in  all 
the  Eastern  cities.  Boston,  New  York, 
Albany,  Philadelphia,  Charleston,  are 
only  a  few  of  the  places  where  he  was 
heard.  He  always  chose  very  broad 
subjects  for  popular  lectures,  making 
the  untrained  public  free  of  great  gen- 
eralisations with  such  velvet  ease  that 
only  other  scholars  saw  the  iron  scholar- 
ship beneath  and  knew  the  volumes  of 
debate  summed  up  in  one  judicious  sen- 
tence. By  stripping  away  all  superflu- 
ous details,  he  made  the  central  interest 
show  for  itself,  and  could  stimulate  the 
most  sluggish  minds  to  curiosity  by 
glimpses  at  all  that  was  yet  to  be  dis- 
covered. 

"Persuasion  fondled   in   his   look  and 
tone," 

says  the  ode  which  we  have  already 
quoted. 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  85 

"Then  how  the  heat   through   every 

fibre  ran, 
Felt  in  the  gathering  presence  of  the 

man, 
While  the  apt  word  and  gesture  came 

unbid!" 

It  was  his  own  unfeigned  delight  in 
what  he  had  to  tell  that  carried  captive 
every  meeting  he  addressed. 

Several  of  Agassiz's  fellow-workers 
had  either  accompanied  or  followed  him 
to  America,  and  in  a  short  time  he  had 
rallied  friends  enough  to  re-establish  the 
"  scientific  factory  "  in  East  Boston  in- 
stead of  !N"euch4tel.  Afterward  its  site 
was  changed  to  Cambridge.  An  atmos- 
phere of  enthusiasm,  of  happiness  in 
opportunity  and  delight  in  achievement, 
enveloped  Agassiz  as  much  in  one  part  of 
the  world  as  in  another  ;  but,  as  for  the 
domestic  details  of  this  new  Neuch&tel, 

'     S 

without  one  mollifying  drop  of  woman's 
influence,  with  no  assuaging  worldliness, 
and  no  guardian  to  mix  a  little  nitrogen 


86  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

with  the  ozone  —  imagination  gives  it 
up.  Such  feminine  eye-witnesses  as  we 
have  consulted  turn  with  a  shiver  from 
the  recollection  ;  and  the  more  humor- 
ous reminiscences  which  have  found  their 
way  into  print  present  a  confused  pict- 
ure of  snapping  turtles  lurking  under 
the  stairs,  of  a  little  fox  and  other  sur- 
prises in  the  garden,  and  of  a  general 
need  for  wary  walking.  Agassiz's  or- 
derly arrangement  of  the  animal  king- 
dom was  certainly,  in  his  own  favourite 
phrase,  " ideal,  not  material.'7  It  is 
said  that  a  lady  asked  him  at  a  dinner  to 
explain  the  difference  between  a  frog  and 
a  toad.  The  Great  Professor,  beaming 
with  pleasure  at  not  being  taken  una- 
wares, dived  first  into  his  right  pocket 
and  then  into  his  left,  produced  two 
living  specimens,  and  then  and  there 
made  the  matter  plain  to  her.  Even 
after  his  second  marriage  these  habits 
prevailed ;  and  one  of  the  favourite 
Cambridge  anecdotes  concerning  him 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  87 

tells  of  his  wife's  calling  in  terror 
from  her  dressing-room,  " There's  a 
snake  in  my  shoe!"  and  of  Agassiz' s 
prompt  answer,  horrified  in  his  turn, 
"One  snake  !  but  where  zen  are  ze  other 
six?" 

For  several  years  there  is  mention, 
growing  less  and  less  frequent,  of  his 
expected  return  to  Europe.  Perhaps  it 
would  have  been  hard  for  Agassiz  him- 
self to  say  just  when  he  recognised  that 
he  had  given  up  returning,  and  had  cast 
in  his  lot,  for  better,  for  worse,  with  the 
United  States.  One  biographer  evidently 
thinks  the  determination  was  made  at 
first  sight  of  Niagara  Falls.  In  1848 
the  wave  of  revolution  which  broke 
against  half  the  thrones  of  Europe  swept 
Neuch&tel  away  from  Prussia,  and 
Agassiz  was  honourably  discharged  from 
the  royal  service.  Almost  at  the  same 
time  the  Lawrence  Scientific  School  was 
founded  in  Harvard  University,  and  the 
chair  of  zoology  and  geology  was  ac- 


88  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

cepted  by  Agassiz.  His  private  life  was 
forming  again  in  America.  His  son  of 
fourteen  years  came  out  to  him  in  1849, 
and  in  1850  Agassiz 's  second  marriage 
(to  Elizabeth* Cabot  Gary)  made  him  an 
American  at  heart,  and  brought  his 
daughters  to  a  new  home  in  Cambridge. 
His  wife  from  the  first  affected  his  scien- 
tific as  well  as  his  private  life  ;  for  she 
was  to  him  secretary  and  assistant,  and 
even  collaborator.  She  kept  the  scien- 
tific journal  of  his  two  expeditions  to 
South  America,  and  since  her  husband's 
death  has  crowned  her  labours  in  his 
behalf  by  a  Life  of  Agassiz  which  makes 
others  feel  their  writings  an  imperti- 
nence. 


X. 

BUSINESS  and  pleasure  alike  sent  Ag- 
assiz  to  travel  over  all  the  eastern  half 
of  the  United  States.  To  all  the  princi- 
pal cities  he  went  as  a  lecturer.  Early 
in  his  stay  he  led  a  scientific  expedition 
to  Lake  Superior.  In  1853  he  passed 
up  the  Mississippi  from  the  Gulf  to  St. 
Louis.  For  some  years  Charleston  was 
familiar  to  him,  from  his  holding  a 
second  professorship  there  in  the  Medi- 
cal School.  He  knew  well  all  the  New 
England  states  ;  and,  if  all  the  gigantic 
boulders  to  which  the  country  folk  have 
given  his  name  were  gazetted,  his  paths 
would  stand  recorded  almost  as  well  as 
the  course  of  one  of  his  own  glaciers. 
The  steamers  of  the  Coast  Survey  carried 
him  from  the  coral  reefs  of  Florida  to  the 
ice-scored  coasts  of  Maine.  But,  in  spite, 
of  his  additional  professorship  at  Charles- 
ton (later  also  at  Cornell)  and  his  in- 
numerable engagements  to  lecture,  he 


90  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

was  always  a  Harvard  professor ;  and 
in  spite  of  his  wanderings  he  stands 
identified  with  Boston  at  the  time  when 
Boston  touched  her  highest  mark.  This 
was  the  time  of  the  famous  Saturday 
Club,  when  Agassiz,  Emerson,  Felton, 
Hawthorne,  Holmes,  Longfellow,  Motley, 
and  their  peers  met  round  one  table ; 
when  Bache  and  Henry  were  well-known 
figures  in  Cambridge  ;  the  time  which 
made  Lowell,  afterward  a  darling  guest 
of  London,,  look  back  across  the  ocean 
from  St.  James's,  and  say  that  he 
had  never  known  such  society  as  in 
Boston  and  Cambridge.  Neither  before 
nor  since  has  Boston  been  so  much  of  a 
capital  city.  She  was  much  smaller 
then  than  now,  and  her  average  man 
stood  higher.  Public  life  was  still  in 
good  odour.  Her  merchants  had  gained 
their  wealth  at  a  time  when  the  struggle 
for  wealth  went  by  personal  prowess 
rather  than  by  the  machine  gun ;  and 
they  often  knew  the  quarter-deck  as  well 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  91 

as  the  counting-house,  and  the  library  as 
well  as  either.  The  Civil  War  was  still 
but  a  distant  growling,  and  yet  threat- 
ening enough  to  stimulate  the  grim  Puri- 
tan blood,  which  seems  to  do  best  under 
indignation.  The  land  was  pullulent 
with  poets,  artists,  and  sages,  of  whom 
no  inconsiderable  number  really  came 
to  some  accomplishment. 

The  better  part  of  this  activity  was 
literary,  not  scientific.  But  men  of  let- 
ters always  recognised  Agassiz  as  one  of 
their  own  kind,  and  he  found  his  niche  in 
any  intellectual  society.  It  is  to  Agassiz 
the  man,  the  brilliant  and  bewitching 
companion,  the  charming  and  affection- 
ate friend,  the  lover  of  fun  as  well 
as  of  wit  and  wisdom,  and  to  Agassiz 
the  inspired  teacher  of  breathless  au- 
diences, more  than  to  Agassiz  the 
learned  ichthyologist  and  geologist,  that 
we  find  constant  reference.  Emerson 
and  Longfellow,  Holmes  and  Lowell, 
are  the  names  with  which  his  is  asso- 


92  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

elated  by  the  general  reader.  The  men- 
tions of  Agassiz  in  verse  and  the  poems 
directly  addressed  to  him  or  to  his 
memory  are  enough  to  give  him  a  place 
in  literature  —  a  feature  in  a  scientific 
biography  for  which  we  can  think  of 
no  parallel.  Darwin's  work  is  far  more 
familiar  to  the  outside  world,  and  the 
ideas  for  which  Darwin  stands  sponsor 
are  running  amuck  through  poetry  and 
prose ;  but  where  are  the  personal  trib- 
utes to  him  which  can  be  called  enduring 
literature  ? 

We  do  not  mean  by  this  to  imply  that 
the  verses  written  to  Agassiz  are  in  any 
case  great  poems  ;  but  they  are  certainly 
on  that  level  where  the  world  keeps 
them  for  their  own  sake/  not  merely  of 
the  kind  that  pupils  and  kindred  shall 
not  willingly  let  die.  Any  one  who 
does  not  know  Lowell's  long  ode  to 
Agassiz  should  read  it  forthwith  for  the 
sake  of  the  character-painting.  Longfel- 
low's u Fiftieth  Birthday  of  Agassiz" 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  93 

is  probably  known  to  every  reader. 
When  it  was  read  before  the  Saturday 
Club,  Agassiz  broke  down  over  the  last 
verse  with  the  reference  to  his  mother. 
His  special  thanks  to  Longfellow  for 
another  set  of  verses,  written  in  French 
to  accompany  a  gift  of  wine,  were  given 
because  his  mother  could  understand  the 
French ;  and  they  are  too  pretty  to 
omit :  "  I  was  on  my  way  to  your  house, 
when,  from  thinking  of  my  mother, 
great  tears  began  to  fill  my  eyes  ;  and, 
fearing  to  be  taken  for  an  idiot,  I  re- 
turned home.  ...  I  can  let  my  good 
mother  read  my  wine,  if  I  cannot  let  her 
taste  it. » 

Longfellow  and  Agassiz  had  a  very 
tender  feeling  for  each  other,  and  Long- 
fellow wrote  him  from  abroad  of  "the 
delight  with  which  I  found  your  memory 
so  beloved  in  England.  At  Cambridge, 
Professor  Sedgwick  said  :  <  Give  my  love 
to  Agassiz.  Give  him  the  blessing  of  an 
old  man.9  In  London,  Sir  Eoderick 


94  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

Murchison  said;  f  I  liave  known  a  great 
many  men  that  I  liked  ;  bnt  I  love  Agas- 
siz.' In  the  Isle  of  Wight,  Darwin  said : 
1  What  a  set  of  men  you  have  in  Cam- 
bridge !  Both  our  universities  put  to- 
gether cannot  furnish  the  like.  Why, 
there  is  Agassiz, — he  counts  for  three.'  " 
The  published  recollections  of  Agassiz 
constantly  repeat  that  only  those  who 
knew  him  personally  can  appreciate  his 
power  or  understand  the  charm  he  exer- 
cised. ' '  Never, '  '  said  Emerson,  '  <  could 
his  work  be  separated  from  himself.'' 
"He  was  the  largest  in  personality  of  all 
the  men  I  ever  knew,'7  says  another 
writer.  And  still  another  speaks  of  a 
kind  of  human  presence  worth  more  than 
any  scholastic  artifices,  widening  the 
mind  as  if  by  enchantment.  Such  a 
human  presence  at  Harvard  was  Louis 
Agassiz.  "Can  one  ever  forget  that 
beaming  face  as  he  used  to  come  stroll- 
ing across  the  yard,  with  lighted  cigar, 
in  serene  obliviousness  of  the  university 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  95 

statutes  ? ? '  An  individuality  so  forceful 
that  casual  acquaintances  knew  him  for  a 
great  man  went  with  magnificent  physi- 
cal strength,  and  with  a  childlike  inno- 
cence and  belief  in  the  goodness  of 
everybody  and  the  kindness  of  fate.  He 
was  always  happy,  always  interested, 
always  eager  to  share  his  last  piece  of 
good  luck  with  his  neighbours.  An  un- 
conquered  joy  was  strong  within  him, 
and  he  walked  in  paths  of  pleasantness, 

"  He  that  was  friends  with  earth,  and  all 

her  sweet 
Took  with  both  hands  unsparingly." 

'No  description  omits  his  quick  tears  and 
his  ringing  laughter.  Agassiz  once  said 
that  he  had  never  known  a  dull  hour  in 
his  life  ;  and  he  thought  it  an  incredible 
joke  that  any  person  could  seek  to  kill 
time  in  a  world  so  full  of  interest., 
"Only  give  me  these  spare  hours  of 
yours,"  he  exclaimed.  "I  can  fill  them 
full  enough !" 


96  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

A  composite  portrait  stands  out  clearly 
from  the  mere  words  or  phrases  that 
various  writers  have  fitted  to  Agassiz,  if 
we  string  them  along  in  ungrammat- 
ical  sequence  :  His  genial  countenance,  Ms 
great  face  beaming  with  pleasure,  the  eyes 
whose  sunshine  runs  before  the  lips;  a  firm 
benignity  of  face,  and  winning  ways;  his 
phrases  all  the  more  taJcing  for  the  broken 
English;  an  inexhaustible  buoyancy  and 
huge  good  fellowship  ;  robust  and  dominat- 
ing ;  cheerful,  Jcindly,  engaging,  frank,  ir- 
resistible; ingenuous,  glad,  great-hearted, 
and  bewitching ;  the  jovial  giant,  the  ac- 
knowledged master ;  a  man  to  be  thankful 
for,  with  unsleeping  observation  and  per- 
fectly communicative;  the  unlettered  woods- 
man ran  to  meet  his  service; 'no  one  could 
stand  before  his  smile  ;  and  he  flooded  every 
company  with  the  wealth  of  his  own  opulent 
nature, — 

"Brimful  of  lusty  blood  as  ever  ran, 
And  talcing  life  as  simply  as  a  tree ! " 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  97 

The  face  forms  on  the  canvas,  even 
under  such  disconnected  touches  —  the 
face  of  an  eminently  lovable  man,  full  of 
the  primal  force  of  personality,  abound- 
ing in  good  will  and  bearing  malice  to 
nobody.  One  wonders  that  such  a  man 
ever  made  an  enemy.  When  he  did, 
jealousy  was  at  the  root  of  the  matter 
nine  times  in  ten,  helped  on  by  Agassiz's 
habit  of  putting  to  the  best  scientific  use 
everything  on  which  he  could  lay  his 
hand,  whether  the  property  was  material 
or  intellectual. 

One  French  scientific  friend  never 
called  him  anything  but  ce  cher  Agassiz, 
which  reminds  us  of  the  farewell  toasts 
at  the  club,  before  his  voyages  of  ex- 
ploration : 

"To  dear  Agassiz"  and  — 

"Heaven  bless  the  Great  Professor, 
And  the  land  his  proud  possessor !  '* 

In  his  will  he  calls  himself  "Louis 
Agassiz,  Teacher."  To  characterise 


98  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

him  as  a  teacher,  we  take  again  the 
plentiful  phrases  waiting  us  ;  and  they 
all  may  be  reduced  to  two  things,  his 
own  enjoyment  and  his  sympathy.  He 
could  write  the  primary  divisions  of  the 
animal  kingdom  on  the  blackboard  with 
delight,  and  turn  to  see  whether  his 
class  had  taken  the  idea,  with  the  same 
interest  when  he  did  it  for  the  thou- 
sandth time  in  America  as  when  he 
faced  his  first  audience  in  Neuch&tel. 
He  had  a  most  patient  toleration  of  dull 
and  ignorant  persons ;  and,  if  a  pupil 
wished  to  learn,  that  was  more  than 
enough.  As  a  lecturer,  he  carried  his 
audience  captive.  All  caught  a  sparkle 
of  his  enthusiasm,  and  were  fired  by  his 
ardour.  There  was  contagion  in  him. 
He  was  himself  a  scientific  force.  He 
lacked  rancour,  spoke  courteously  of 
opponents,  and  took  as  much  pleasure 
in  the  discoveries  of  others  as  in  his 
own.  And,  finally,  he  was  u  mag- 
netic" so  often  that  we  ought  to  raise 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  99 

the  word  to  a  high,  power  to  make  it 
take  due  place  in  onr  portrait.  But  his 
greatest  power  lay  in  his  own  profound 
conviction  of  the  beauty  and  importance 
of  the  things  with  which  he  dealt.  He 
was  reported  at  the  Lowell  Institute 
as  using  "rapturous  terms  concerning 
glaciation  in  Maine.''  Here  was  a  man 
after  Sydney  Smith's  own  heart.  Who 
can  imagine  Agassiz  speaking  disre- 
spectfully of  the  equator! 


XL 

THE  narrative  of  Agassiz's  life  flows 
evenly  for  some  ten  or  fifteen  years  after 
his  establishment  in  America.  He  was 
always  poor ;  bnt  his  poverty  grew  less 
extreme,  and  lost  all  its  bitterness  as  his 
debts  disappeared.  A  modest  salary 
was  assured  by  his  Harvard  position; 
and  outside  the  university  his  lectures 
not  only  were  well  paid,  but,  when  re- 
printed in  book  form,  they  sold  well, 
and  he  ventured  on  one  or  two  popular 
text-books.  The  scheme  which  relieved 
him  for  good  and  all  of  anxiety  concern- 
ing his  daily  bread  was  due  to  his  wife. 
With  the  help  of  the  older  children  she 
planned  a  day  school  for  young  ladies, 
which  should  enjoy  the  great  advantage 
of  Agassiz's  name  and  roof  as  well  as  the 
inestimable  advantage  of  his  teaching. 
The  plan  worked  to  a  charm,  and  helped 
him  in  more  ways  than  one,  as  it  sub- 
stituted employment  at  his  own  home 


LOTJIS  AGA&SIZ  101 

for  the  fatiguing  and  sometimes  fever 
ishly  hurried  tours  through  the  country, 
which  interfered  with  research  and  re- 
acted on  his  health.  Long  years  of  con- 
stant overwork  began  to  tell  on  the  mag- 
nificent constitution  which  had  been  his 
best  tool  ;  and  during  the  last  twenty 
years  of  his  life  he  was  interrupted  by 
nervous  illnesses,  more  and  more  fre- 
quent, almost  always  due  to  overwork 
of  the  brain. 

A  list  of  his  published  writings  shows 
hundreds  of  technical  scientific  papers, 
reprints  of  popular  lectures,  reports  to 
the  government  or  to  the  Coast  Survey, 
addresses  on  educational  subjects  —  and 
all  this  besides  a  miscellaneous  scientific 
correspondence  which  might  have  stag- 
gered a  younger  man. 

The  most  ambitious  work  in  original 
research  planned  during  his  American 
life  is  the  Contributions  to  the  Natural  His- 
tory of  the  United  States.  This  was  to 
embrace  ten  large  volumes.  An  elabo- 


102  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

rate  prospectus  was  issued  in  1855,  and 
subscriptions  poured  in  from  all  parts  of 
the  country.  The  enthusiasm  shown  by 
the  public  surprised  even  Agassiz,  who 
found  the  cost  of  the  work  guaranteed  be- 
forehand, in  happy  contrast  to  the  Fossil 
Fishes.  It  was  largely  from  the  unlearned 
average  class  of  readers  that  money  was 
promised  him ;  and  he  strongly  felt  the 
obligation  toward  that  class,  and  avoided 
technical  words  whenever  this  was  possi- 
ble. Warned  by  experience  perhaps,  he 
had  planned  that  each  volume  should  be 
complete  in  itself,  so  that  anything  which 
might  prevent  completion  of  the  whole 
work  should  not  injure  the  separate  parts. 
This  precaution  was  well  justified,  as  only 
four  of  the  ten  volumes  were  ever  written. 
The  reason  of  course  was  that  a  thousand 
other  things  were  crying  out  to  be  done, 
and  that  in  particular  he  grew  more  and 
more  absorbed  in  the  great  Museum 
which  stands  at  Harvard  to-day  as  the 
direct  result  of  his  labours. 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  103 

Being  interested  above  all  things  in 
comparative  science  and  in  structure 
even  more  than  in  function,  Agassiz  was 
of  course  a  collector.  He  had  been  con- 
stantly collecting  from  the  time  he  was 
old  enough  to  paddle  about  the  Swiss 
lakes  in  search  of  eels  and  chub.  All 
was  fish  that  came  to  his  net  —  the  more 
the  better,  since  specimens  could  then 
be  exchanged  and  also  sacrificed  without 
compunction  when  they  were  wanted  for 
a  demonstration.  Any  money  which  had 
not  been  twice  spent  on  other  things  was 
lavished  on  the  purchase,  transportation, 
and  care  of  specimens.  Once  we  have 
seen  that  his  collections  did  him  good 
service  outside  their  use  for  his  investi- 
gations, since  it  was  their  sale  which  en- 
abled him  to  marry,  and  on  the  money 
they  brought  he  had  lived  for  some  time 
at  Neuchatel.  The  nominal  ownership 
of  the  things,  so  long  as  they  were  prop- 
erly arranged  for  use  by  scientific  men, 
was  of  too  little  consequence  for  Agassiz 


104  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

to  spend  a  moment's  regret  on  the  matter. 
When  he  came  to  America,  he  had  come 
comparatively  unencumbered,  making  a 
fresh  start  in  this  as  in  other  things  ;  and 
his  earliest  letters  are  full  of  remorse 
that  he  had  not  brought  with  him  any- 
thing and  everything  he  could  lay  hands 
on,  so  jbhat  he  might  make  exchanges  for 
the  new  specimens  he  found  on  all  sides. 
He  used  to  come  home  laden  with  spoil 
from  the  fish  market  in  every  new  place 
he  visited  ;  and,  as  his  fame  grew,  it  be- 
came the  thing  for  any  person  who  found 
something  peculiar  to  forward  it  to  the 
Great  Professor,  who  was  always  grateful, 
always  interested.  The  fishermen  at 
Nahant,  where  he  spent  his  summers, 
would  go  miles  out  of  their  way  to  bring 
him  anything  they  thought i '  queer, ?  ?  and 
feel  amply  rewarded  by  his  delighted 
greeting.  He  was  once  embarrassed  by 
the  unexpected  arrival  of  a  lively  black 
bear,  for  whom  his  establishment  offered 
but  poor  accommodation;  and,  while  he 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  105 

was  at  work  upon  the  Forth  American 
Testudinata,  turtles  rained  in  upon  him 
from  every  point  of  the  compass.  Even 
the  cases,  jars,  and  alcohol  necessary  for 
such  collections  were  of  great  value.  A 
rickety  old  shanty  on  the  river-bank  was 
offered  by  Harvard  for  storage,  and 
afterward  a  better  wooden  building  on 
the  college  grounds,  with  four  hundred 
dollars  a  year  for  the  cost  of  keeping  the 
specimens  in  good  condition.  This  was 
good  in  so  far  as  it  s&ved  Agassiz  four 
hundred  dollars  a  year,  but  the  cost  of 
preservation  was  far  greater  than  this; 
and  in  1850  twelve  thousand  dollars  was 
raised  by  private  subscription  to  pur- 
chase the  collections  and  secure  them 
for  Cambridge.  "This  gave  him  back 
in  part  the  sum  he  had  already  spent 
upon  them,  and  which  he  was  more  than 
ready  to  spend  again  in  their  mainte-y 
nance  and  increase." 

So  matters  stood  when  one  of  the  high- 
est zoological  positions  in  the  world  was 


106  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

offered  to  Agassiz  —  the  chair  of  palae- 
ontology at  Paris.  He  had  already  de- 
clined a  call  to  Zurich,  and  even  this 
invitation  to  take  the  place  so  long  held 
by  Cuvier  did  not  take  him  back  to 
Europe.  He  was  in  love  —  ' i  the  word, ' 7 
says  Mrs.  Agassiz,  ' i  is  none  too  strong ' ? — 
with  his  work  in  America ;  and,  though 
he  recognised  that  the  highest  of  scien- 
tific honours  had  been  tendered  him  — 
especially  when  the  French  government 
offered  to  keep  the  post  open  long  enough 
to  allow  the  completion  of  work  actually 
on  hand  —  he  deliberately  declined  it. 
It  is  said  that  he  might  have  had  com- 
bined salaries  amounting  to  nearly  fif- 
teen thousand  dollars,  with  the  highest 
rank,  social  and  scientific,  and  the  direc- 
torship of  the  Jardin  des  Plantes,  so 
anxious  was  France  to  secure  him  on  any 
terms.  Later  on  the  offer  was  renewed, 
and  only  three  months  of  residence  yearly 
was  asked  from  him.  It  is  small  wonder 
that  his  refusal  brought  a  burst  of  enthu- 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  107 

siasm  from  the  American  people,  and 
that  nothing  which  they  could  give 
seemed  good  enough  for  him.  His  abso- 
lute unconcern  about  personal  wealth 
was  a  trait  especially  picturesque  in 
America.  Its  sincerity  was  too  patent 
for  any  scoffer  to  doubt  it,  and  this  gave 
him  the  more  power  over  moneyed  men. 
Though  always  poor  himself,  he  had  scien- 
tific use  and  control  of  very  large  sums 
of  private  and  public  money.  Legisla- 
tures voted  funds  on  his  authority,  mill- 
ionaires brought  him  offerings,  and  stu- 
dents subscribed  their  savings  for  his 
plans.  If  we  had  his  account-book,  it 
certainly  would  read  like  a  fairy-tale  of 
science.  Yet  these  funds  were  from  hand 
to  mouth  :  he  never  could  be  sure  when 
a  new  plan  presented  itself  that  the 
necessary  means  would  follow  ;  and,  as  his 
health  broke  down,  he  had  attacks  of, 
despondency  which  contradicted  his  very 
nature. 

In  1858  the  Museum  which  had  long 


108  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

existed  in  Agassiz' s  mind  began  really 
to  take  material  shape.  Mr.  Francis  C. 
Gray,  during  Ms  life  a  friend  and  helper 
of  Agassiz,  left  by  will  a  sura  of  fifty 
thousand  dollars  for  a  Museum  of  Com- 
parative Zoology.  It  was  just  after 
Agassiz' s  refusal  of  the  invitation  to 
Paris  had  roused  public  enthusiasm  to  its 
highest.  Harvard  University  offered  to 
give  land  for  a  site,  the  legislature  voted 
other  lands  equivalent  to  a  yearly  income 
of  several  thousand  dollars,  private  sub- 
scriptions promptly  raised  seventy  thou- 
sand dollars  for  the  cost  of  the  building ; 
architects  asked  to  contribute  their 
work ;  and  Agassiz  presented  all  the 
collections  he  had  amassed  since  the 
former  sale, —  a  gift  estimated  at  well 
over  ten  thousand  -  dollars.  In  June, 
1859,  the  corner-stone  was  laid ;  and 
one  of  the  greatest  comparative  museums 
of  the  world  had  fairly  begun  to  be. 

With  dramatic  propriety,  Agassiz  took 
the  summer  when  his  Museum  was  at 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  109 

last  building  for  a  short  visit  to  Europe 
—  his  first  and  only  return.  He  had 
been  in  America  thirteen  years  —  as 
long  as  he  had  lived  in  Neueh&teL  He 
had  left  home  famous  indeed,  but  unsuc- 
cessful in  all  practical  affairs :  he  came 
back  laden  with  honours  and  free  from 
debt.  It  was  but  a  flying  visit.  All  his 
time  on  the  Continent  was  spent  with 
his  mother,  with  only  two  days  for 
Alexander  Braun  and  a  week  in  scien- 
tific Paris.  Then  in  the  autumn  of  1859 
he  returned  to  Cambridge,  to  find  the 
Museum  building  well  under  way. 

The  administration  of  a  great  Museum 
had  been  for  half  his  lifetime  one  of 
Agassiz's  day-dreams.  He  had  seen 
enough  of  the  wasted  opportunities  and 
lack  of  organisation  in  many  great 
museums.  The  art  of  managing  collec- 
tions to  the  best  advantage  is  as  modern 
as  the  sister  profession  of  the  librarian ; 
and  it  is  hardly  a  boast  to  say  that  both 
have  been  chiefly  cisatlantic.  As  in 


110  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

all  Agassiz's  work,  much  consideration 
was  paid  to  the  intelligent  but  unlearned 
public.  Specimens  were  so  put  into 
different  cases  and  rooms  that  the  whole 
system  of  group  and  sub-group  could  be 
followed  by  a  novice  and  verified  by  the 
help  of  a  synopsis  printed  on  the  walls. 
A  geographical  classification  of  animals 
was  carried  out  in  another  part  of  the 
building,  where  the  characteristic  fauna 
of  each  region  was  exhibited  This  feat- 
ure was  particularly  emphasised ;  for 
Agassiz  believed  that  the  distribution 
and  range  of  animals  would  furnish  data 
for  determining  in  how  many  various 
centres  a  species  had  originated.  He 
found  the  distinct  geographical  limit 
of  wild  species  very  surprising.  "I 
think/'  he  said  once^.  with  his  taking 
French  accent,  "that  they  had  their 
legs  only  if  they  should  not  run  away  !  " 
The  vulgar  idea  of  a  museum  as  merely 
a  place  for  the  storage  of  curiosities  was 
contradicted  in  every  room.  A  rare 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  111 

animal  is  of  no  more  intrinsic  value  for 
teaching  zoology  than  a  common  one; 
and  the  nses  of  the  Museum  for  instruc- 
tion were  always  put  first.  As  an  insti- 
tution, it  was  made  an  integral  part  of 
Harvard  University  ;  an  adequate  teach- 
ing staff  was  provided,  and  a  Bulletin 
issued  regularly.  To-day  the  building 
is  some  three  times  as  large  as  when 
Agassiz  knew  it,  the  larger  part  of  the 
addition  being  at  the  expense  of  his  son 
and  successor  ;  and,  as  we  write,  it  is  an- 
nounced that  the  three  children  of  Louis 
Agassiz  have  offered  to  complete  the 
plan  and  unite  the  wings  of  the  great 
building,  which  should  stand  a  monu- 
ment to  the  name  of  Agassiz  as  durable 
as  the  fossils  within  it.  It  was  by  Agas- 
siz's  own  request  made  improper  to  call 
the  Museum  by  his  name,  but  this  legal 
disability  is  entirely  ignored  by  the 
public.  Over  the  main  entrance  is  the 
proper  title — "  University  Museum  of 
Comparative  Zoology " — and  just  be- 


112  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

yond  the  threshold  Powers' s  marble  bust 
of  Agassiz  smiles  a  benevolent  welcome  ; 
and  by  a  dedicatory  tablet  in  the  wall 
the  newer  portion  of  the  building  is 
offered  to  his  father  by  Alexander,  son 
of  Louis  Agassiz. 


XII. 

ALTHOUGH  Agassiz  had  so  definitely 
adopted  America,  lie  was  not  legally  a 
citizen  of  the  United  States  until  in  the 
darkest  hour  of  the  Civil  War  he  took 
out  his  naturalisation  papers  —  a  small 
public  act  to  indicate  his  feeling.  He 
abhorred  slavery,  and  yet  he  was  a 
cause  of  offence  to  the  Abolitionists  be- 
cause of  his  opinion  that  the  negro  and 
the  white  represented  distinct  species. 
Another  opinion  concerning  the  human 
race,  that  it  could  not  possibly  have  de- 
scended from  one  couple  and  had  sprung 
from  several  independent  centres,  had 
at  one  time  brought  him  abuse,  while 
at  the  same  time  he  was  abused  for  up- 
holding the  order  of  creation  as  given 
in  Genesis  and  for  his  immediate  re- 
course to  the  Deity  when  explanation 
was  to  seek.  So,  too,  on  the  negro  ques- 
tion, both  sides  accused  him  of  time- 
serving. All  matters  of  acclimatisation, 


114  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

amalgamation,  the  probable  fate  and 
danger  of  the  half- breed,  etc.,  interested 
him  greatly  ;  but  he  kept  their  scientific 
and  social  aspects  apart,  and  was  sur- 
prised when  those  who  reported  his  opin- 
ions failed  to  do  the  same.  Why  a  be- 
lief that  the  ancestors  of  two  men  were 
created  in  different  regions  should  carry 
with  it  the  belief  that  one  of  them  has 
a  moral  right  to  buy  and  sell  the  other 
is  not  evident  to  logic  ;  but  a  country 
struggling  for  life  and  death  is  not  in  a 
mood  for  strict  logic.  When  the  war 
had  actually  begun,  no  one  could  longer 
doubt  Agassiz's  patriotism.  His  letters 
are  full  of  the  war  and  of  his  own  in- 
tense feeling.  His  loyalty  showed  also  in 
another  shape  — his  constant  urging  that 
American  scholars  should  feel  their  re- 
sponsibility to  the  country  as  well  as  to 
the  scientific  world,  should  publish  their 
results  at  home,  and  throw  off  the  intel- 
lectual tyranny  which  had  survived  the 
political  form. 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  115 

Before  peace  had  come,  a  wholly  new 
scientific  scheme  took  Agassiz  out  of  the 
country  for  a  time.  In  the  winter  of 
1865  his  health  was  such  that  a  vacation 
and  a  change  of  scene  were  imperative. 
He  proposed  to  spend  some  months 
quietly  with  his  wife  in  Eio  de  Janeiro. 
Toward  Brazil  he  was  drawn  by  a  life- 
long desire ;  for  with  the  longing  for 
wider  knowledge  of  the  globe  and  the 
still  unquenched  thirst  for  travel  in 
strange  regions  there  mingled  a  special 
personal  wish  to  meet  in  their  own 
waters  those  fishes  of  Spix  to  whom  he 
owed  his  introduction  to  the  scientific 
world.  His  plan  for  a  complete  rest 
was  characteristically  transformed  in 
the  twinkling  of  an  eye  by  a  chance 
meeting  with  Mr.  Nathaniel  Thayer,  a 
wealthy  and  public-spirited  Bostonian, 
who  offered  to  make  the  journey  a  scien- 
tific expedition  by  paying  the  expenses 
of  six  assistants.  "It  was  so  simply  said, 
and  seemed  to  me  so  great  a  boon,  that 


116  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

at  first  I  hardly  believed  I  had  heard 
him  rightly.  .  .  .  Not  only  did  he  pro- 
vide most  liberally  for  assistants,  but 
...  he  continued  to  advance  whatever 
sums  were  needed. "  The  expedition 
proved  longer  and  more  costly  than  was 
at  first  anticipated,  "  which/'  Agassiz 
hastily  adds,  "is  usual  in  such  cases." 
He  wrote  the  news  to  his  mother,  say- 
ing, "You  will  shed  tears  of  joy  when 
you  read  this,  but  such  tears  are  harm- 
less.77 Then  follow  some  of  the  wonder- 
ful favours  already  vouchsafed  him. 
The  steamship  has  invited  the  whole 
party  to  travel  free  of  charge.  The  gov- 
ernment has  surprised  him  by  desiring 
naval  officers  to  aid  his  party.  "I  seem 
like  the  spoiled  child  of  the  country ; 
and  I  hope  God  will  giye  me  strength  to 
repay  in  devotion  to  her  institutions  and 
to  her  scientific  and  intellectual  develop- 
ment, all  that  her  citizens  have  done  for 
me. ' ' 

This  overjoyed  gratitude  breathes  also 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  117 

from  the  pages  of  the  joint  journal  kept 
by  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Agassiz  —  A  Journey 
in  Brazil.  Such  extraordinary  kindness 
and  goodness  had  never  pursued  any- 
body before.  From  the  emperor  who, 
on  the  very  battlefield,  ordered  collec- 
tions made  of  the  fishes  in  the  southern 
rivers  along  which  his  army  marched, 
down  to  the  humblest  Indian  who  took 
an  interest  in  the  extraordinary  tastes  of 
his  white  visitors,  the  tale  of  universal 
good  will  is  the  same. 

Agassiz  thankfully  compares  all  this 
with  the  difficulties  encountered  some 
forty  years  before  by  his  old  teacher 
Martius  and  with  those  braved  by  the 
still  earlier  expedition  of  Humboldt. 
Re-reading  Humboldt' s  Narrative  on  the 
spot,  he  says,  "I  could  not  but  con- 
trast the  cordial  liberality  which 
smoothed  every  difficulty  in  my  path 
with  the  dangers,  obstacles,  and  suffer- 
ing which  beset  his."  Off  Santarem, 
where  the  dark  waters  of  the  Tapajoz 


118  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

enter  the  yellow  Amazon,  Martins, 
whose  little  vessel  fonnd  the  crossing  of 
the  river  always  dangerous,  had  come 
near  to  losing  his  life  by  shipwreck ; 
and  after  his  safe  return  to  Munich  he 
sent  a  votive  Christ  to  the  little  church 
which  stands  upon  the  beach.  Thither 
Agassiz  made  a  dutiful  visit  when  his 
own  special  steamer,  provided  free  of 
charge  by  the  Brazilian  government, 
touched  at  Santarem. 

Laden  with  valuable  collections  for  the 
Museum,  with  some  eighteen  hundred 
new  species  of  fish  added  to  the  two 
hundred  formerly  known  to  inhabit  the 
Amazon,  with  accumulated  observations 
concerning  the  geographical  distribution 
of  fishes  in  the  river-basin  —  a  subject 
which  always  fascinated  Agassiz  —  and 
with  much  testimony  of  greater  or  less 
value  concerning  former  glaciers  in  the 
tropics,  he  returned  home  in  the  summer 
of  1866,  and  promptly  fell  to  work  again. 
He  gave  some  public  courses  of  lectures 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  119 

the  next  winter,  speaking  first  of  all  at 
the  Lowell  Institute  npon  the  scientific 
results  of  the  Brazilian  journey.  If  he 
seemed  stronger  in  health,  it  was  through 
the  mere  revivifying  force  of  such  enjoy- 
ment. Not  only  to  his  eager  intellect 
had  the  year  brought  satisfaction.  His 
scientific  delights  were  added  to  all  the 
enjoyments  of  an  ordinary  traveller. 
Only  one  who  has  never  felt  it  can  speak 
lightly  of  the  wonderful  sensuous  beauty 
of  the  tropical  forests,  ceiled  as  well  as 
carpeted  with  flowers ;  the  air  swooning 
with  heavy  scents ;  the  narrow  boat- 
paths  winding  through  tangled  archi- 
pelagoes ;  the  gunner's  bag  of  birds  look- 
ing like  a  bunch  of  flowers  ;  the  insects 
by  day  and  by  night  like  living  jewels  ; 
the  colour,  angry  and  brave,  that  is  the 
very  soul  of  the  tropics  ; 

"And    all  the    marvel  of   the  golden 
skies.77 


xm. 

WHEN  explanations  of  natural  laws 
were  needed,  Agassiz  had  immediate  re- 
course to  tlie  creative  act  or  thought  of 
the  Deity.  He  believed  that  a  careful 
student  of  the  successive  variations  im- 
posed on  the  great  primary  types  of  the 
animal  kingdom  might  trace  the  work- 
ings of  the  divine  mind  in  the  same 
sense  in  which  the  processes  of  a  human 
mind  are  traced  through  the  various 
works  uttered  by  a  human  artificer. 

The  mystical  half  of  Agassiz' s  expla- 
nation is  easily  referred  to  the  former  in- 
fluences of  Munich.  One  cannot  under- 
stand the  nature- philosophy  then  in 
vogue  without  remembering  the  Ger- 
man school  of  philosophy  proper.  Kant, 
Fichte,  Schelling,  and  Hegel  had  fol- 
lowed one  another  rapidly, —  all  at  work 
upon  the  old  question  of  the  reality  of 
the  external  world,  and  all  with  the  be- 
lief in  an  a  priori  knowledge  indepen- 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  121 

dent  of  experience.  To  the  pure  idealist 
the  world  of  the  normal  man  has  no 
more  real  existence  than  the  visions  of 
delirium.  It  is  a  series  of  mental  phe- 
nomena, to  be  explained  by  the  laws  of 
mind  ;  and  the  proper  study  of  logician, 
chemist,  and  zoologist,  is  man.  Asser- 
tions about  what  can  and  cannot  be  in 
nature,  when  dated  from  the  closet  and 
not  from  the  laboratory,  have  proved 
false  because  the  intellect  which  dictated 
the  rules  was  feeble,  not  because  the 
method  was  intrinsically  absurd. 

The  spirit  which  had  informed  that 
era  was  still  dominant  at  Munich  during 
the  three  years  which  stamped  them- 
selves so  deeply  upon  Agassiz.  Schelling 
and  Oken  were  the  two  most  famous  pro- 
fessors—the philosopher  who  asserted 
his  right  to  teach  zoology  and  the  zoo- 
logist who  insisted  on  introducing  philos- 
ophy. Oken  was  an  avowed  natural- 
ist ;  and,  if  he  decided  first,  he  at  least 
hoped  to  find  himself  confirmed  by  the 


122  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

facts,  and  thought  it  worth  while  to  look 
for  them.  Agassiz  had  from  the  be- 
ginning the  modern  habit  of  hearing 
testimony  first  and  giving  judgment 
afterward.  Even  as  a  student,  he  dis- 
agreed with  many  of  Oken's  ideas  ;  and 
as  a  teacher,  he  repeatedly  and  earnestly 
warned  all  students  against  listening  to 
any  witness  but  Nature  herself.  Much 
more  must  Agassiz  have  rejected  Schel- 
ling's  scientific  ukases.  It  is  not  likely 
that  Schelling  influenced  him  on  any 
purely  zoological  matter,  but  he  evi- 
dently had  much  influence  on  Agassiz' s 
idea  of  ivhat  constitutes  an  explanation. 
Had  there  never  been  any  question  about 
facts,  zoological  theories  would  still  be 
interesting,  because  it  must  be  interest- 
ing to  get  at  what  any  thinking  man 
considers  a  satisfactory  stopping-place  in 
explanation  —  whether  he  rests  the  world 
on  a  tortoise  or  insists  on  supporting  the 
tortoise  by  a  protozoon,  or  perhaps 
underwrites  it  all  by  the  Word  which 
was  in  the  beginning. 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  123 

Now  Schelling7  s  system  of  philosophy 
makes  a  close  parallelism  between  the 
internal  and  external  worlds,  to  which  it 
allows  an  equal  reality,  making  both, 
however,  but  parallel  manifestations  of 
some  higher  and  more  inclusive  reality, 
which  is  the  thinker  and  the  thought. 
Natural  facts  are  mere  manifestations 
of  mind.  This  is  a  favourite  saying 
with  Schelling  as  with  Agassiz ;  but 
Agassiz  is  almost  entirely  concerned  with 
the  derivation  of  Nature  from  the  mind 
of  God,  and  pays  less  attention  to  the 
reciprocal  relations  between  human 
thought  and  the  things  that  cause  it. 
"  Every  thing  organic  is  more  or  less  of 
a  symbol.  A  plant  is  a  corporealised 
throb  of  the  soul.77  This  is  Schelling7 s, 
and  may  well  suggest  Agassiz7  s  maxim, 
— "  A  species  is  a  thought  of  the  Crea- 
tor. 7  7  But  Schelling  soon  drifts  toward 
poetry,  and  indeed  his  ideas  are  best 
known  in  English  through  his  influence 
on  "Wordsworth  and  Coleridge.  "The 


124  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

spirit  sleeps  in  the  stone,  dreams  in  the 
animal,  and  wakes  in  the  man."  "Nat- 
ure is  Spirit  visible :  Spirit  is  invisible 
Nature."  All  these  sayings  have  one 
central  notion,  which  may  seem  bold  in 
prose,  but  in  poetry  is  common  to  all 
times  and  all  races.  One  can  trace  it  all 
the  way  from  the  Orient  to  the  Yankee 
poet  who  is  most  inclined  to  speak  of  the 
" meaning"  of  natural  phenomena  or 
natural  objects. 

"They  are  but  sailing  foam -bells 

Along  Thought's  causing  stream, 

And  take  their  shape  and  sun-colour 

From  him  that  sends  the  dream." 

But  Agassiz  writes  in  sober  prose ; 
and  the  peculiar  flavour  in  his  writings 
comes  from  his  taking  the  vocabulary  of 
the  mystic,  and  interpreting  it  as  literally 
true. 

The  average  man  who  gives  the  will  of 
God  as  an  explanation  uses  the  words  in 
rather  a  Pickwickian  sense,  as  is  strik- 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  125 

ingly  brought  home  to  us  when  we  find  a 
scholar  who  has  no  more  hesitation  in 
introducing  the  Creator  than  in  suggest- 
ing an  earthquake  or  a  glacial  epoch  or 
any  other  exceptional  agent.  A  critic 
feels  something  like  a  man  who,  having 
acknowledged  that  daily  bread  is  sent  by 
God,  should  get  no  other  explanation  of 
a  loaf  found  on  the  kitchen  table.  Shall 
we  quarrel  with  the  statement  because 
of  mental  reservations  concerning  the 
baker? 

Again,  Agassiz  is  studying  not  the 
human  but  the  divine  mind,  and  the  re- 
sult is  doubly  startling.  We  are  not  apt 
to  think  of  mysticism  and  anthropo- 
morphism together,  but  with  Agassiz  we 
find  them  inextricably  mixed.  It  is 
easy  to  put  what  we  may  choose  to  call 
Agassiz' s  real  meaning  into  terms  which 
his  opponents  would  accept.  But  it  is 
not  easy  to  convince  ourselves  that  lie 
would  have  accepted  any  such  interpreta- 
tion, nor  is  it  easy  to  juggle  his  distinct 


126  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

and  repeated  statements  into  any  shape 
which  shall  avoid  his  plain  acceptance 
of  a  Deity  as  frankly  anthropomorphic 
as  ever  child  addressed  in  prayer  or 
painter  throned  on  clouds.  The  lack  of 
a  mental  pou  sto  affects  any  one  who 
would  examine  Him  in  whom  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being,  and  all 
our  efforts  avail  not  a  whit  toward  shift- 
ing the  centre  of  gravity.  This  seems 
commonplace  enough,  but  we  are  shocked 
into  a  new  interest  when  we  find  a  man 
apparently  unconscious  of  the  difficulty. 

Phrases  as  startling  as  those  below  oc- 
cur again  and  again  in  Agassiz's  writings 
(the  italics  are  not  Agassiz's)  :  — 

"We  disclose  the  mental  operations  of 
the  Creator  at  every  step."  -  "  It  is  im- 
possible not  to  recognise  the  immediate 
action  of  thought,  and  even  to  specialise 
the  intellectual  faculties  it  reveals. "  "  Pre- 
meditation, ....  consecutive  thought,  the 
operations  of  a  mind  acting  in  conform- 
ity with  a  plan  laid  out  beforehand,  and 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  127 

sustained  for  a  long  period."  "It  is 
not  a  kind  of  work  which  is  delegated 
...  to  a  law  working  its  way  uniformly ; 
but  it  is  that  kind  of  work  which  the 
engineer  retains  when  he  superintends 
and  controls  his  machine  while  it  is  work- 
ing." "When  the  largest  amount  and 
greatest  variety  of  work  is  produced  by 
a  particular  invention,  we  consider  the 
result  as  indicative  of  superiority  of 
genius  or  inventive  capacity.  Here  in 
the  animal  kingdom  we  see  it  illustrated 
to  an  extent  which  the  best  trained  mind 
can  hardly  follow."  u  The  limitation  of 
closely  allied  species  to  different  geo- 
logical periods  exhibits  thought :  it  ex- 
hibits- the  power  of  sustaining  nice  dis- 
tinctions, notwithstanding  the  interposition 
of  great  disturbances  by  physical  revolu- 
tions." 

To  some  minds  this  seems  but  faint 
praise  with  which  to  characterise  the 
Creator.  It  is  difficult  to-day  to  state 
Agassiz's  beliefc  at  once  shortly  and 


128  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

fairly ;  that  is,  without  the  use  of  ques- 
tion-begging epithets  which  shall  suggest 
either  irreverence  or  absurdity.  It  is 
very  easy  to  sneer  at  them  5  and,  if  any 
one  wants  to  see  this  done  in  a  mas- 
terly manner,  we  refer  him  to  HaeckeFs 
History  of  Creation  (the  English  transla- 
tion revised  by  Professor  E.  Bay  Lancas- 
ter, the  translator  mentioned  briefly  as 
"  a  young  lady  "  ).  Here  he  will  find  a 
chapter  on  the  doctrines  of  Cuvier  and 
Agassiz,  which,  though  uncivil  almost  to 
brutality  in  its  tearing  away  any  last  veil 
of  a  decent  mysticism,  does  yet  give  the 
theory  as  Agassiz' s  own  words  warrant 
it.  The  creator  "plagued  with  ennui, 
amusing  himself  with  planning  and  con- 
structing most  varied  toys, ?'  and  destroy- 
ing them  by  a  general  revolution,  "at 
last  (but  very  late)  struck  with  the 
happy  thought  of  creating  something 
like  himself/'  is  really  Agassiz' s  deity, 
only  described  in  words  which  have  dis- 
respectful instead  of  respectful  associa- 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  129 

tions.  It  is  pleasant  to  note  that  even 
such  sneering  comment  is  instantly  fol- 
lowed by  expressions  of  admiration  for 
Agassiz's  scientific  work  in  zoology.  In 
one  sense,  this  is  certainly  the  most 
inclusive  of  all  theories  of  development, 
since,  in  following  out  his  thoughts  from 
simpler  to  more  complex  beings,  we  are, 
as  Haeckel  says,  "driven  to  the  curious 
supposition  that  the  Creator  himself  has 
developed,  together  with  the  organic 
nature  which  he  created. " 

This  method  of  inducing  (or  should 
we  say  deducing?)  the  creator  from  the 
created  brings  to  mind  Paley  and  Butler 
and  perhaps  the  once  famous  Bridge- 
water  Treatises.  But  after  once  con- 
founding the  infidel,  the  English  theolo- 
gians let  well  enough  alone,  while  Agas- 
siz  goes  on  too  far  for  safety.  Yet,  among 
the  men  who  have  created  God  in  their 
own  image,  surely  there  has  been  none 
other  so  consistent.  The  same  eager 
attention  and  logic  which  he  brought  to 


130  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

the  construction  of  the  life  history  of  an 
acaleph  or  the  habits  of  a  perished 
pterodactyl,  he  turns  upon  the  evidences 
of  a  Creator  and  the  finding  out  of  his 
ways.  Every  one  knows  the  story  of 
Cuvier  and  the  Devil,  who  threatened  to 
devour  him,  and  whom  the  intrepid 
naturalist  classed  to  his  face  as  an  un- 
doubtedly graminivorous  animal,  be- 
cause of  his  horns  and  cloven  hoofs.  A 
like  story  told  of  Agassiz  would  not  have 
concerned  itself  with  the  Devil  —  but 
perhaps  it  is  just  as  well  to  drop  the 
parallel. 

There  is  of  course  no  reason  why  Agas- 
siz7 s  opinions  on  religious  matters  should 
carry  weight  merely  because  he  was  a 
great  naturalist.  But  he  should  speak 
with  authority  on  the  question  whether 
the  scientific  facts  then  known  warranted 
any  theory  of  evolution  by  descent. 
And  his  opinion  on  the  matter  was 
definite  and  strongly  held  to  the  end  of 
his  life ;  namely,  that  no  sufficient  evi- 
dence was  adduced  for  such  a  theory. 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  131 

To-day  one  of  the  arguments  for  evo- 
lution by  descent  might  run  as  follows : 
We  have  evidence  enough  to  feel  cer- 
tain (1)  that  no  higher  form  of  life 
comes  into  existence  without  parents, 
and  (2)  that  a  given  kind  of  animal  or 
plant  came  into  existence  at  a  time  for 
which  we  can  roughly  put  upper  and 
lower  limits.  Hence  we  conclude  that 
the  parents  of  the  first  plants  or  animals 
of  any  kind  were  of  some  other  kind. 
But  what  good  is  such  an  argument  to 
one  who  denies  our  major  I  The  state- 
ment that  an  animal  does  not  come  into 
existence  without  some  parent  is  based 
on  observation.  Let  reasonable  evidence 
once  be  brought  that  the  rule  is  not 
universal,  and  the  whole  subject  assumes 
a  different  aspect.  Cuvier,  and  after 
him  Agassiz,  believed  that  such  evi- 
dence could  be  brought,  in  the  reappear- 
ance of  plants  and  animals,  after  each 
cataclysm. 
According  to  the  geologists  of  seventy 


132  LOUIS   AGASSIZ 

years  ago,  a  series  of  world- wide  cata- 
clysms or  catastrophes  liad  transformed 
the  surface  of  the  earth,  doubtless  de- 
stroying all  living  things  and  hence 
separating  different  creations.  If  this  be 
true,  while  the  succession  of  more  various 
and  complicated  creatures  always  goes 
on  from  where  it  was  left  when  flood  and 
fire  and  earthquake  turned  the  earth  into 
a  cemetery  and  the  rocks  into  a  museum, 
then  there  must  be  some  creative  force  at 
work  very  different  from  ordinary  crea- 
tion through  parent  and  child  5  and,  in 
Agassiz's  own  words,  "This  is  not  a 
matter  to  be  argued  :  it  is  one  to  be  in- 
vestigated.77 

Agassiz  declared  that  the  word  "evolu- 
tion 7 ?  might  be  applied  to  his  own  theory, 
the  connection  between  species  being,  as 
he  continually  repeats,  "ideal,  not  mate- 
rial,77 the  thought  of  the  Creator  being 
gradually  unrolled.  It  is  hardly  neces- 
sary to  say  that  his  work  toward  laying 
bare  the  laws  of  such  evolution  is  as 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  133 

valuable  to-day,  when  no  one  doubts  the 
change  of  species  by  descent,  as  it  was 
when  the  weight  of  scientific  opinion 
leaned  the  other  way.  "  A  theory  con- 
nects facts  as  a  string  holds  the  pearls  of 
a  necklace  :  the  theory  itself  may  be  as 
worthless  as  the  string." 

Agassiz's  enthusiastic  belief  in  the 
popularising  of  science  makes  it  inappro- 
priate to  ignore  the  incompetent  public 
whose  discussions  have  overlaid  the 
scientific  debate.  Theories  of  evolution 
have  great  simplicity  of  result  along  with 
great  technicality  in  evidence,  and  they 
have  in  consequence  a  nimiety  of  cham- 
pions and  of  opponents.  Even  to-day 
the  man  whose  knowledge  is  limited  to 
the  statement  that  Darwin  said  every 
man  was  descended  from  a  monkey,  will 
often  volunteer  to  throw  the  weight  of 
his  influence  on  one  side  or  the  other. 
The  great  illiterate  reading  public  seems 
to  think  that  scientific  theory  is  a  matter 
of  grace  to  believe,  and  that  nobody  is 


134  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

an  evolutionist  if  he  does  not  choose  to 
be.  And,  as  a  Harvard  tutor  said  of 
Agassiz,  "  To  admit  a  miracle  when  one 
isn't  necessary  seems  to  be  one  of  those 
works  of  supererogation  which  have  sur- 
vived the  Protestant  Beformation,  and 
to  count  like  the  penances  of  old  for 
merit."  Things  are  now  quieting  down, 
and  we  have  time  to  ask  why  the  relig- 
ious should  rage  and  the  people  imagine 
a  vain  thing.  The  anthropocentric  con- 
ception of  the  universe  dies  as  hard  as  did 
the  geocentric,  and  a  blood  relationship 
between  men  and  apes  is  supposed  to 
affect  the  question  of  immortality ;  but 
we  note  the  paradox  that  Agassiz,  who 
did  not  believe  in  the  descent  of  men 
from  brutes,  did  believe  in  the  immortal- 
ity of  the  brute,  and  was  not  more  than 
half  joking  when  he  predicted  the 
delight  of  good  zoologists  in  a  happy 
hereafter  when  saurians  and  pterodactyls 
could  be  immediately  compared  with 
their  modern  successors,  nor  when  he 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  135 

once  applauded  a  farmer  for  damning 
the  sonls  of  some  oxen.  It  was  like 
Agassiz  to  forget  the  discourteous  wish 
in  his  pleasure  at  the  courteous  belief 
implied. 


XIV. 

IN  1871  the  Coast  Survey  proposed  to 
send  a  vessel  round  the  Horn  to  Califor- 
nia, for  the  purpose  of  deep  sea  dredging ; 
and  Professor  Peirce,  then  the  head  of  the 
Survey,  wrote  to  ask  whether  Agassiz's 
health  would  allow  him  to  go  in  her. 
The  iron  constitution  that  had  served  so 
well  was  breaking  at  last,  strained  past 
all  elasticity  by  a  lifetime  of  persistent 
overwork.  We  have  not  chronicled  the 
recurring  illnesses  that  culminated  in 
1869,  when  there  came  a  sharp  and  un- 
mistakable attack  that  for  a  short  time 
affected  both  speech  and  motion.  Agas- 
siz  in  discouragement  and  depression 
—  Agassiz  hopeless  and  rebellious  —  this 
sounds  impossible  ;  and  to  him  it  was  in- 
deed the  impossible  that  had  happened 
when  his  brain  no  longer  obeyed  his  will. 
Longfellow's  journal  tells  of  attempts  to 
comfort  Agassiz,  who  could  only  repeat, 
"But  I  cannot  work  ! "  and  then  cover 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  137 

his  face  with  his  hands,  and  weep.  After 
the  worst  breakdown  there  were  months 
of  slow  recovery,  when  the  doctors  had 
forbidden  him  either  to  work  or  to  think. 
This  last  terrible  condition  seemed  more 
than  he  could  bear.  "  Nobody  knows 
what  tortures  I  endure  in  trying  to  stop 
thinking,"  he  burst  out  to  a  pupil  — 
and  then  again,  with  a  sort  of  despairing 
cry,  "  Oh,  my  Museum !  my  Museum ! 
always  uppermost,  by  day  and  by  night, 
in  health  and  in  sickness,  always  —  al- 
ways ! J  ? 

In  1871,  when  the  Hassler  was  fitted 
out,  his  strength  had  returned  in  part, 
and  along  with  it  his  hopefulness.  It 
was  decided  that  the  sea  voyage  would 
do  him  good  rather  than  harm ;  and 
Agassiz's  letter  to  Professor  Peirce,  ac- 
cepting provisionally,  sounds  like  him- 
self:  "I  am  overjoyed  at  the  prospect 
your  letter  opens  before  me.  Of  course, 
I  will  go  unless  Brown-Sequard  orders 
me  positively  to  stay  on  terra  firma.  But 


138  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

even  then  I  should  like  to  have  a  hand 
in  arranging  the  party,  as  I  feel  that 
there  never  was,  and  is  not  likely  soon 
again  to  be,  such  an  opportunity  for 
promoting  the  cause  of  science  generally 
and  that  of  natural  history  in  particu- 
lar. " 

The  voyage  lasted  from  December, 
1871,  to  August,  1872.  Mrs.  Agassiz  ac- 
companied her  husband  again,  acting  as 
secretary  ;  and  a  joint  journal,  partly  per- 
sonal, partly  scientific,  was  kept  by  the 
two,  but  was  never  completely  published. 
Long  and  interesting  letters  reporting 
progress  to  Professor  Peirce  were  given 
to  the  public  ;  but  more  interesting  than 
any  of  these  was  the  letter  Agassiz  wrote 
just  before  sailing,  in  which  he  desired 
to  leave  on  record  his  expectations  con- 
cerning the  fauna  of  the  deep  sea.  It 
was  his  opinion  that  the  conditions  of 
pressure,  temperature,  darkness,  etc., 
which  prevail  at  great  depths  would  be 
accompanied  by  a  fauna  resembling  that 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  139 

of  earlier  geologic  times.  Unfortunately, 
the  dredging  apparatus  of  the  Hassler 
was  faulty,  and  the  most  important  hauls 
were  lost,  so  that  the  expedition  cannot 
be  called  successful ;  and  the  prophecies 
remained  to  wait  fulfilment  or  contra- 
diction. 

As  regards  glacial  work,  the  results 
were  better.  The  magnificent  glaciers 
of  the  Straits  of  Magellan  gave  Agassiz 
"a  kind  of  home  feeling,"  and  among 
them  he  passed  "  weeks  of  exquisite  de- 
light." The  traces  of  past  glaciers  still 
more  magnificent  were  as  he  had  foretold 
them.  The  lover  of  travels  will  find  in 
Mrs.  Agassiz7 s  journal  both  charming 
narrative  and  vivid  word-painting,  the 
pictures  ranging  in  subject  from  the 
boat-load  of  degraded  Fuegian  savages 
clamouring  for  beads  and  biscuits,  pray- 
ing, shrieking,  screaming,  to  the  unheed- 
ing engines  that  bore  all  chance  of  more 
"tabac"  away  from  them ;  to  the  calm 
and  stately  panorama  of  the  Straits  of 


140  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

Magellan,  with  the  wonderfully  sym- 
metrical Melinioya,  white  as  purest 
marble  to  the  summit,  a  Fusiyama  of 
the  south  ]  and;  again,  to  the  lava  cave 
in  the  Galapagos,  which  made  a  stately 
banquet  hall,  after  the  red  and  orange- 
coloured  iguanas  who  generally  used  it 
had  been  either  ousted  or  "  collected.77 
Agassiz  travelled  overland  through  Chili 
from  Talcahuana  to  Santiago.  His  state 
of  health  was  now  always  obtruding  it- 
self. For  a  long  time  he  had  used  the 
remedy  of  the  very  strong  and  the  very 
weak,  and  had  believed  by  ignoring  his 
troubles  to  persuade  them  out  of  exist- 
ence. But  now  they  could  no  longer 
be  ignored.  And  when  the  vessel 
reached  San  Francisco,  Agassiz  rested 
for  a  month  in  California  without  an 
attempt  to  see  the  Great  Trees,  and  then 
submitted  to  be  brought  home  across 
the  Eocky  Mountains  without  seeking 
for  so  much  as  a  glacial  scratch  by  the 
way  —  two  little  facts  which  speak  whole 
chapters. 


XV. 

ONCE  more,  and  only  once  more,  was 
Agassiz  to  respond  to  a  new  opportu- 
nity, and  lead  his  followers  to  a  new  sort 
of  service.  When  he  reached  home  in 
1872,  there  was  waiting  him  a  plan  for 
a  summer  school  of  natural  history,  to 
be  established  on  the  seacoast  and 
managed  with  special  reference  to  those 
teachers  who  wished  to  turn  pupil  again, 
and  could  do  so  only  in  their  vacation. 
Observation,  not  memorising ;  verifica- 
tion of  every  statement  5  constant  appeal 
to  nature  —  these  were  the  things  to  be 
emphasised.  Teaching  directly  from 
nature  is  now,  if  not  practised,  at  least 
universally  preached.  But  this  was  not 
true  in  the  American  schools  of  a  gene- 
ration ago,  and  Agassiz  was  untiring  in 
his  efforts  for  a  fundamental  reform. 
"  Appeal  to  Nature, "  was  his  constant 
precept :  "No  one  can  warp  her  to  suit 
his  own  views.  She  brings  us  back  to 


142  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

absolute  truth  as  often  as  we  wander.'7 
Once,  when  he  was  to  give  a  lecture  on 
articulates,  before  a  school  for  girls,  he 
arrived  with  a  liberal  supply  of  very 
active  grasshoppers,  distributed  them 
one  to  each  listener,  and  insisted  that 
everything  he  said  should  be  verified  as 
far  as  was  possible.  "Whenever  an  insect 
escaped,  the  lecture  was  held  to  await  its 
recapture.  This,  Agassiz  says,  seemed 
to  amuse  the  young  ladies  5  but  to  him  it 
was  a  question  of  principle. 

A  summer  school  for  teachers  was  then 
as  great  an  innovation  as  a  marine 
laboratory,  common  though  both  things 
are  to-day.  Agassiz  took  up  the  scheme 
with  characteristic  ardour.  "  Means 
there  were  none,  nor  apparatus,  nor 
building,  nor  even  a  site  for  one.  There 
was  only  the  ideal,  and  to  that  he 
brought  the  undying  fervour  of  his  in- 
tellectual faith. "  And  again  his  faith 
was  justified.  An  impassioned  appeal  to 
the  legislature  of  Massachusetts,  when 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  143 

the  members  of  that  body  were  paying 
their  annual  visit  to  the  Museum,  seems 
to  have  left  them  cold.  At  least  they  did 
not  go  into  executive  session  on  the  steps 
of  the  Museum  and  vote  the  money. 
Such  practical  performance  was  left  for 
Mr.  John  Anderson,  a  rich  merchant  of 
New  York,  who  read  the  appeal  in  the 
evening  papers,  and  promptly  offered 
Agassiz  the  island  of  Penikese  (one  of 
the  smaller  Elizabeth  Islands),  with  the 
house  and  barn  then  standing  upon  it, 
and  fifty  thousand  dollars.  With  such 
a  windfall,  Agassiz  was  not  the  man  to 
postpone  his  school  because  the  architects 
talked  of  "simple  impossibility."  This 
was  in  May.  He  announced  the  opening 
for  July  8  5  on  July  5  the  dormitory 
had  no  floors  and  no  roof  to  speak  of. 

"The  next  day  was  Sunday.  Agassiz 
called  the  carpenters  together.  He  told 
them  that  the  scheme  was  neither  for 
money  nor  for  the  making  of  money ; 
no  personal  gain  was  involved  in  it.  It 


144  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

was  for  the  best  interests  of  education, 
and  for  that  alone.  Having  explained 
the  object  and  stated  the  emergency,  he 
asked  whether,  under  these  circumstances 
the  next  day  was  properly  for  rest  or 
for  work.  They  all  answered,  'for 
work.'  They  accordingly  worked  the 
following  day  from  dawn  till  dark,  and 
by  nightfall  the  floors  were  laid.77 

One  day  more,  and  the  necessary  nails 
were  driven  just  as  the  expected  steamer 
touched  the  wharf.  Agassiz  was  wait- 
ing with  a  welcome  at  the  landing-place, 
his  face  aglow  with  pleasure  and  thank- 
fulness. To  the  barn  where  the  swal- 
lows7 nests  were  still  undisturbed  between 
the  rafters,  and  the  birds  kept  flying  in 
and  out  of  the  wide  doors,  the  teachers 
and  guests  went  for  the  "Opening  address ; 
and  as  Agassiz  stood  looking  at  his  fifty 
chosen  pupils,  his  finished  buildings,  his 
blue  sea  beyond  them  teeming  with  the 
life  they  were  to  study,  in  a  burst  of  un- 
ashamed emotion  he  called  on  all  present 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  145 

to  pray  in  silence  for  a  blessing  on  their 
work  together.  Unvulgarised  by  repeti- 
tion, such  an  impulse  touched  the  more 
repressed  natures  with  whom  he  had  to 
do.  "I  would  not  have  any  man  to 
pray  for  me  now,"  he  said  j  and  many 
must  have  remembered  the  words,  when 
a  few  months  later,  his  students  bore  his 
coffin  into  the  chapel  of  Harvard  College. 

On  coming  back  from  Penikese,  Agas- 
siz  tried  to  do  his  work  as  usual.  For 
some  time  his  strength  held  out.  All 
through  October  and  November  he  was 
busy  at  the  Museum,  and  was  as  always 
planning,  writing,  and  lecturing.  But 
his  last  appearance  as  a  lecturer  came  on 
December  2,  and  the  rest  we  give  in  Mrs. 
Agassiz's  own  words  :  — 

"  Those  who  accompanied  him,  and 
knew  the  mental  and  physical  depression 
which  had  hung  about  him  for  weeks, 
could  not  see  him  take  his  place  on  the 
platform  without  anxiety.  And  yet, 
when  he  turned  to  the  blackboard,  and 


146  LOUIS  AGASSIZ 

with  a  single  sweep  of  the  chalk  drew 
the  faultless  outline  of  an  egg,  it  seemed 
impossible  that  anything  could  be  amiss 
with  the  hand  or  the  brain  that  were  so 
steady  and  so  clear. 

"  The  end,  nevertheless,  was  very  near. 
Although  he  dined  with  friends  the  next 
day,  and  was  present  at  a  family  festival 
that  week,  he  spoke  of  a  dimness  of 
sight  and  of  feeling  <  strangely  asleep. ' 
On  the  6th  he  returned  early  from  the 
Museum,  complaining  of  great  weari- 
ness, and  from  that  time  he  never  left 
his  room.  Attended  in  his  illness  by  his 
friends,  Dr.  Brown-Sequard  and  Dr. 
Morrill  Wyman,  and  surrounded  by  his 
family,  the  closing  week  of  his  life  was 
undisturbed  by  acute  suffering  and  full 
of  domestic  happiness.  Even  the  voices 
of  his  brother  and  sisters  were  not  wholly 
silent,  for  the  wires  that  thrill  with  so 
many  human  interests  brought  their 
message  of  greeting  and  farewell  across 
the  ocean  to  his  bedside.  The  thoughts 


LOUIS  AGASSIZ  147 

and  aims  for  which,  he  had  lived  were 
often  on  his  lips,  but  the  affections  were 
more  vivid  than  the  intellect  in  these 
last  hours.  The  end  came  very  peace- 
fully, on  the  14th  of  December,  1873. 
He  lies  buried  at  Mount  Auburn.  The 
boulder  that  makes  his  monument  came 
from  the  glacier  of  the  Aar,  not  far 
from  the  spot  where  his  hut  once  stood; 
and  the  pine-trees  which  are  fast  grow- 
ing up  to  shelter  it  were  sent  by  loving 
hands  from  his  old  home  in  Switzerland. 
The  land  of  his  birth  and  the  land  of  his 
adoption  are  united  in  his  grave.77 


THE    FIFTIETH    BIRTHDAY    OF  AGASSIZ. 

It  was  fifty  years  ago, 
In  the  pleasant  month  of  May, 

In  the  beautiful  Pays  de  Vaua, 
A  child  in  its  cradle  lay. 

And  Nature,  the  old  nurse,  took 

The  child  upon  her  knee, 
Saying,  "  Here  is  a  story-book 

Thy  Father  has  written  for  thee." 

"  Come  wander  with  me,"  she  said, 

"  Into  regions  yet  untrod  ; 
And  read  what  is  still  unread 

In  the  manuscripts  of  God." 

And  he  wandered  away  and  away 
With  Nature,  the  dear  old  nurse, 

Who  sang  to  him  night  and  day 
The  rhymes  of  the  universe. 

And  whenever  the  way  seemed  long, 

Or  his  heart  began  to  fail, 
She  would  sing  a  more  wonderful  song 

Or  tell  a  more  marvellous  tale. 

So  she  keeps  him  still  a  child, 

And  will  not  let  him  go, 
Though  at  times  his  heart  beats  wild 

For  the  beautiful  Pays  de  Vaud  ; 

Though  at  times  he  hears  in  his  dreams 

The  Ranz  des  Vaches  of  old, 
And  the  rush  of  mountain  streams 

From  glaciers  clear  and  cold  ; 

And  the  mother  at  home  says,  "  Hark  I 
For  his  voice  I  listen  and  yearn  ; 

It  is  growing  late  and  dark, 
And  my  boy  does  not  return  !  " 

May  28,  1857. 


BIBLIOGBAPHY. 

There  are  three  longer  Lives  of  Agas- 
siz  (in  book  form)  and  also  a  very  large 
number  of  shorter  accounts  of  his  life  in 
popular  or  scientific  periodicals  and  in 
the  Transactions  of  learned  societies.  A 
person  who  aims  at  exhaustive  reading 
will  have  scores,  if  not  hundreds,  of  such 
articles  to  deal  with ;  and  any  selection 
from  them  is  necessarily  somewhat  arbi- 
trary. The  short  list  given  below  in 
chronological  order  has  been  made  with 
reference  to  the  average  reader  of  no 
special  tastes,  and  nothing  has  been 
named  which  cannot  be  read  in  English. 
The  three  longer  Lives  were  written  in 
English ;  the  shorter  accounts  are  in 
many  languages,  French  (naturally) 
coming  next  to  English  in  order  of  fre- 
quency. Extensive  bibliographies  are 
given  in  Mr.  Marcou's  and  Mr.  Holder's 
books  mentioned  below.  In  this  list  the 
three  longer  Lives  and  three  shorter  com- 


150  BIBLIOGEAPHY 

plete  accounts  are  marked  with  an 
asterisk ;  the  remaining  six  references  are 
to  picturesque  sketches  of  Agassiz  or  of 
his  work  from  various  points  of  view. 

I.  Proceedings  of  the  California  Academy 
of  Sciences.       Volume    V.,    December, 
1872.     < '  Agassiz' s  Work  and  Method.  > > 
By  Joseph  Le  Conte.     Eeprinted  in  Mr. 
Holder's  book  (see  below).     This  is  only 
one  of  several  articles  presented  at  a 
memorial  meeting  of  the  Academy. 

II.  Every    Saturday.      Volume    XVI., 
1874.     "In  the  Laboratory  with  Agas- 
siz. "     By  Samuel  H.  Scudder.     Also  in 
Scientific  American,  April  18,  1874,  and 
as  appendix  to  Lowell's  "Agassiz,"  in 
American  Poems,  edited  by  H.  E.  Scudder. 

III.  Atlantic  Monthly,  February,   1874. 
"Becollections  of  Agassiz."     By  Theo- 
dore Lyman. 

*IV.  Biographical  Memoirs  of  the  Na- 
tional Academy  of  Sciences.  Volume  II., 


BIBLIOGEAPHY  151 

1878.  "  Memoir  of  Louis  Agassiz,  1807- 
1873. ' ?  By  Arnold  Guyot.  Also  printed 
separately  at  Princeton,  K  J.,  1883. 

*  V.  Annual  Report  of  the  Smithsonian  In- 
stitution for  1878.  (pp.  236-261.  Wash- 
ington. )  < '  Louis  Agassiz. ?  ?  By  Ernest 
Favre.  Translated  (from  the  French) 
by  M.  A.  Henry. 

*VL  Louis  AGASSIZ,  HIS  LIFE  AND 
CORRESPONDENCE.  Edited  by  Elizabeth 
Gary  Agassiz.  (Boston  and  New  York  : 
Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  2  vols.,  1885 ; 
1  vol.,  1895.)  This  is  the  standard  work 
on  Agassiz  5  and  the  ordinary  reader  will 
want  no  other,  and  will  certainly  want 
this. 

*VII.  London  Quarterly  Review.  Vol- 
ume LXYL,  July,  1886.  "Louis  Agas- 
siz." Eeprinted  in  LitteWs  Living  Age ?,, 
August  14,  1886.  Anonymous.  This  is 
really  a  review  of  Mrs.  Agassiz's  book, 
but  it  is  so  well  and  sympathetically 


152  BIBLIOGEAPHY 

written  that  it  might  also  rank  as  a 
much  abridged  version  of  her  work. 

VIII.  BECOLLECTIONS    OF    EMINENT 
MEN.      By  E.    P.    Whipple.     (Boston: 
Ticknor  &  Co.,  1887.)     This  contains  a 
chapter,  "  Louis  Agassiz." 

IX.  Popular    Science    Monthly,     April, 
1892.   "AgassizatPenikese."  By  David 
Starr  Jordan. 

*X.  THE  LIFE  AND  WORK  OF  Louis 
AGASSIZ.  By  Charles  F.  Holder.  (Lead- 
ers in  Science  Series.  New  York  and 
London:  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1893.) 
This  book  is  very  similar  in  aim  to  the 
present  volume.  It  is,  however,  some- 
what larger  and  more  inclusive,  and  is 
profusely  illustrated,  Joeing  the  only  Life 
which  specially  considers  the  tastes  of 
younger  readers. 

*XI.  LIFE,  LETTERS,  AND  WORKS  OF 
Louis  AGASSIZ.  By  Jules  Marcou.  2 
volumes.  (London  and  New  York, 
1896  :  Macmillan  &  Co.) 


BIBLIOGEAPHY  153 

XII.  The     American     Naturalist     for 
March,  1898  (the  fiftieth  anniversary  of 
Agassiz7s  entrance  on  the  duties  of  his 
Harvard  professorship),  is  given  up  to 
seven  articles  upon  Agassiz. 

To  this  catalogue  of  volumes  and  articles 
is  added, 

XIII.  A  SHOUT  LIST  OF  VERSES  CON- 
CERNING AGASSIZ. 

(a)  "  Agassiz.77  By  James  Eussell 
Lowell.  A  long  memorial  ode. 
(Z>)  "The  Fiftieth  Birthday  of  Agassiz.'7 
By  Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow. 
(<?)  "Noel.77  By  Henry  Wadsworth 
Longfellow.  French  verses  sent  to  Agas- 
siz, with  a  gift  of  wine,  on  Christmas 
Eve  of  1864.  Fifty  copies  of  a  trans- 
lation by  John  E.  Norcross  were  printed 
in  Philadelphia  in  1867  (Kingwalt  & 
Brown). 

(d)  "Three  Friends  of  Mine.77  By 
Henry  Wadsworth  Longfellow.  A  series 
of  four  sonnets  in  memory  of  Felton, 


THE  BEACON  BIOGRAPHIES. 


The  following  volumes  are  issued  :  — 

Louis  Agassiz,  by  ALICE  BACHE  GOULD. 
Phillips  Brooks,  by  the  EDITOR. 
John  Brown,  by  JOSEPH  EDGAR  CHAMBERLIN. 
Aaron  Burr,  by  HENRY  CHILDS  MERWIN. 
James  Fenimore  Cooper,  by  W.  B.  SHUBRICK  CLYMER. 
Stephen  Decatur,  by  CYRUS  TOWNSEND  BRADY. 
Frederick  Douglass,  by  CHARLES  W.  CHESTNUTT. 
David  G.  Farragut,  by  JAMES  BARNES. 
Alysses  S.  Grant,  by  OWEN  WISTER. 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  by  Mrs.  JAMES  T.  FIELDS. 
Father  Hecker,  by  HENRY  D.  SEDGWICK. 
Sam  Houston,  by  SARAH  BARNWELL  ELLIOTT. 
"Stonewall"  Jackson,  by  CARL  HOVEY. 
Thomas  Jefferson,  by  Hon.  THOMAS  E.  WATSON. 
Robert  E.  Lee,  by  WILLIAM  P.  TRENT. 
James  Russell  Lowell,  by  EDWARD  EVERETT  HALE,  Jr. 
Thomas  Paine,  by  ELLERY  SEDGWIOK. 
Daniel  Webster,  by  NORMAN  HAPGOOD. 
% 

The  following  are  among  those  in  preparation:  — 

John  James  Audubon,  by  JOHN  BURROUGHS. 
Edwin  Booth,  by  CHARLES  TOWNSEND  COPELAND. 
Benjamin  Franklin,  by  LINDSAY  SWIFT. 
Ulexander  Hamilton,  by  JAMES  SCHOULER. 


Henry  W.  Longfellow,  by  GEORGE  RICE  CARPENTER. 
S.  F.  B.  Morse,  by  JOHN  TROWBRIDGE. 
J.  G.  Whittier,  by  RICHARD  BURTON. 


THE  WESTMINSTER   BIOG- 
RAPHIES. 


The  WESTMINSTER  BIOGRAPHIES  are  uniform  in  plan, 
size,  and  general  make-up  with  the  BEACON  BIOGRAPHIES, 
the  point  of  important  difference  lying  in  the  fact  that 
they  deal  with  the  lives  of  eminent  Englishmen  instead 
r  of  with  those  of  eminent  Americans.  They  are  bound  in 
limp  red  cloth,  are  gilt-topped,  and  have  a  cover  design  and 
a  vignette  title-page  by  BERTRAM  GROSVENOR  GOODHUE. 

The  following  volumes  are  issued:  — 

Robert  Browning,  by  ARTHUR  WAUGH. 
Daniel  Defoe,  by  WILFRED  WHITTEN. 
Adam  Duncan,  by  H.  W.  WILSON. 
John  Wesley,  by  FRANK  BANFIELD. 

Many  others  are  in  preparation. 


SMALL,  MAYNARD  &  COMPANY,  Publishers, 
6  BEACON  STREET,  BOSTON. 


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A  £. 


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THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CAUFORNIA  LIBRARY 


